


The Lucifer Match

by gwyneth rhys (gwyneth)



Category: Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: Fire, First Time, Kidnapping, M/M, Novel, Old West, Post-Series, Psychological Torture, Revenge, Torture, post-Obsession
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2001-10-06
Updated: 2001-10-06
Packaged: 2017-11-23 14:36:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 57,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/623252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwyneth/pseuds/gwyneth%20rhys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A novel that's mostly about fire, in many forms: the aftermath of loss, its purging nature, the destructive force of a wildfire, the fever of obsession, and the flame of love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Dreams of Life

> **A man can have but one life and one  
>  death,  
>  One heaven, one hell.**
> 
> _Robert Browning_

 

There is a story Vin Tanner remembers, a story that comes from one of the people, but not a tribe he's known. Cherokee, he thinks, maybe, but he can no longer recall for certain.

It says there are gates to the Land of Souls, and those gates are guarded by two dogs that we see as two stars in the heavens. You must bring food with you on your journey to the Land of Souls to get past those two dogs and enter. If you give food to the first dog, he will let you pass, but if you fail to save some food for the second dog, you cannot go past him. You are trapped between the dogs, the stars, forever. A lost soul.

He watches his friend, Chris Larabee, now, and wonders if you can be trapped among the living that way. If you can be a lost soul here on earth, because that is what Chris seems to be. Vin wishes he had enough food for both dogs so Chris could go forward, or some secret trick that would work to bring him back out of that place. Wishes he could find him, or that Chris would let himself be found and led home. But Chris appears to want to stay lost there, Vin believes, or else he doesn't know that someone can find him if he just turns around and looks back, back toward Vin, who is waiting for him.

 

At least two months had passed since the shooting, but it seemed as if Chris would never really heal from his wounds. At his most sour and angry, Vin believed that Chris didn't want to heal either physically or mentally, and he felt tasked by this. He sat across the table from Chris on the boardwalk, a checkers game between them, Chris's attention focused far away and not on the pieces. In the lingering quiet and out of boredom, Vin cleaned Chris's Colt Peacemaker. Waiting for Chris to move, waiting for him to change.

The bandage on his chest had long since gone away. Nathan Jackson had decided Chris was fit enough to even target practice a bit, but no one could interest Chris in doing much of anything except sitting around, drinking glumly and silently.

Vin wouldn't have minded so much if it had just been silence, but the level of Chris's hostility unnerved him at times. And it wasn't helped by his own hostility; Vin had made it clear how poorly he thought Chris had handled the whole thing with Ella Gaines, not least of which was failing to shoot her when he had a clear line of fire.

He tried to understand it by putting himself in those shoes, but couldn't quite wrap his mind around Chris's willful stupidity. It wasn't as if he himself hadn't done some damn fool things over a girl before, but this had been something more than foolishness. Despite all that, Vin couldn't stop feeling sorry for Chris, couldn't fight the feeling that somehow, if he had been a better friend, he could have stopped Chris before it got to that point.

No one had stopped Chris, though, and now here he was, lost within his rage, stoking the fire of revenge inside him. It was a slow poison, one that would only eat away at the healthy part of him and prevent the wounded part from healing.

Vin put his hand inside the pocket of his coat again, something he'd done often lately, and wrapped his hand around the small doeskin bag there. The past few weeks he'd gone back and forth trying to decide if he should give the items in the bag to Chris, and what he should say. There were words that someone like Josiah Sanchez or Mary Travis would know to say, but they were not familiar to him.

"Side seems better today," Vin said lightly, pointing the revolver toward his eye and sticking his thumb underneath the barrel to reflect light up into it. Satisfied, he clicked the cylinder into place and wiped down the outside. Then he glanced at Chris to see if he'd even heard. "It's still your move."

Chris looked up at him from under his brows, a lock of his blond hair hanging in front of his left eye. He knew what Vin was trying to do, what Vin had been trying to do for the past few weeks, and it was beginning to grate on his nerves. Between him and Buck alternately playing nursemaids and accusers, he'd been thinking it was time to leave Four Corners. If he hadn't bought the land outside town, he would just get on his horse and ride until he found Ella again, and when he found her, wrap his hands around her throat and squeeze the life out of her. Everywhere he went, from Mary to the boys, he met those looks of pity and disappointment, and it was slowly driving him mad.

"I'm tired of playing." He rose from the table gingerly, pulled his coat over the one good shoulder and then shrugged into the other side, and went to his horse. "When there's something to do, let me know." He didn't look at Vin as he turned away, knowing that Vin was disgusted enough with him for the whole town. He didn't really care about Buck's disappointment in him, he'd seen enough of that over the years, but he hated seeing that look in Vin's eyes. Those words of Vin's kept coming back to Chris -- "Sorry you didn't shoot her when you had the chance." Even if Vin had let go of it, Chris hadn't, couldn't.

Vin morosely watched him leave, aware that he hadn't helped the situation. He knew he should talk to Chris, but the words kept coming out wrong each time he tried. They were either mean or soft, and neither was the kind of thing that sat well with Chris. As Chris rounded the corner of the last building, Vin decided it was time to stop playing at all this and do something. The worst part was not knowing how to talk to him, to feel cut off from his closest friend and hopeless about connecting and understanding. Like one of those explorers he'd heard of who searched for the Northwest Passage only to find themselves trapped in ice, starving and freezing. As if all he could do was write lines in a journal in his poor hand, detailing the floundering failure of his mission, and leave it for Chris to find later. "Men are starving or dead. Ship being crushed by ice pack. All hope lost." Only then maybe Chris would know what had happened and where he'd gone wrong.

He strolled over to the church, where he could hear banging and crashing from inside -- meaning Josiah was in there, working on the interior as usual. He peered in, not quite willing to go inside all the way. As if by not making his presence known to Josiah, he could change his mind and go back, not talking about what he wanted to talk about. Just as he turned to go, thinking better of it, he heard Josiah's clear baritone preacher's voice from off to his left. "Tricky, aren't you?'

Vin shook his head and entered, closing the door behind him. "Aw, I changed my mind. Didn't want to bother you when you're so busy."

Holding up the planer in his hand, Josiah grinned at him. "Much as the devil may love idle hands, at times I wouldn't mind being a bit more idle. I've been trying to get this doorway fixed and my hands are numb."

Vin touched his hat and sat down in the last pew, watching Josiah as he dusted off the wood shavings from his shirt and pants.

"So, what did you want to talk to me and then not talk to me about?" He sat down across the aisle from Vin and waited. It was always slow going to get Vin to talk about anything, even when you could tell he wished to. He seemed to consider each word as carefully as an assayer might a pouch of gold, and never wanted to let too much out in case he came off as too sentimental.

"Well..." Vin trailed off, staring at the pulpit up front. "I ain't real good at this sort of thing, you know."

Josiah didn't say anything; he knew this was Vin's way of leading up to something. Ever since Vin had helped him when he'd been accused of murder, Vin was more inclined toward talking to him, to confessing his feelings about things he'd no doubt kept to himself his whole life. Yet it was still clearly a struggle for him each time, as if he'd only just discovered what it meant to be part of the human race.

"I been wondering if Chris is going to get better."

"Better how? Physically he's fine, Nathan says. He was hurt badly, but he seems to have recovered for the most part. So I believe you must be hinting at his emotional state."

Vin nodded.

"Hmm. Because he's angry, or because he talks even less than before?"

"Both, I reckon. He just -- it's like he won't even try to get better."

"Have you ever given much thought to the fact that he's probably humiliated?"

Vin pulled his head back and looked skeptically at Josiah.

"Well, think about it. He was all set to leave here and stay with her. He believed everything she said, even to the point of arguing with you and Buck in her favor. To find out that she'd set him up the whole way, and that he didn't shoot her, has probably made him feel awful foolish."

Josiah didn't mention how much he also thought it had to do with Vin, specifically. He was willing to believe that Chris could forget arguing with Buck about his information that something was wrong with Ella's situation. But he wasn't so sure Chris could forget the harsh words to Vin, and that he'd given up so quickly on him. They'd forged a fast friendship in their short time together, and Josiah believed Vin was completely ignorant of just how much his good opinion meant to Chris. To have thrown Vin's friendship back in his face, only to be proved wrong, would be a humiliation greater than any other.

"Hadn't thought of it like that."

"We're all exiles from the garden, Vin."

Puzzled, Vin looked sideways at him with a scowl on his face.

"Ella Gaines was no different than any of the rest of us. We're all sinners, cast out of paradise for our actions. Some of us spend our lives trying not to be sinners, to rise above it. But some people, they only know what they want, and they'll do anything to get it. Everything that drove us from the garden is there in their meager souls."

Vin thought on that for a while, staring at his boots and tossing his hat around and around in his hands.

"I said something to him," Vin explained. "I keep wondering if it was too much. I think he was already damn steamed at me."

"For pointing out to him the truth about Ella. Well, he was mad at Buck too, if that makes a difference. Sometimes when a man is thinking with his heart instead of his head--"

"Or his britches."

"--the last thing he wants is to have that pointed out to him." Josiah looked at Vin to see his reaction, but Vin was just staring at his hands. "What did you say to him you're so worried over?"

"I told him he shoulda shot her when he had the chance."

Josiah raised his eyebrows and nodded. Well, that would certainly help Chris along in his guilt, and Chris generally didn't need much help in that direction.

"He didn't disagree. He said 'next time.' But I keep wondering if he ain't hanging on to it. Hating me for saying it. Hating us all for thinking it, because you know we all are."

"Hard for a man like Chris to forgive himself for doing something wrong." Josiah wondered if Vin had any idea how much Chris had come to need Vin's friendship, or how important he was to Chris's recovery. In fact, at times he wondered if Chris even realized it himself.

Vin cast him a baleful look, and Josiah laughed. "All right, I know, how's he different about that than the rest of us? I'm just saying... I've come to believe he has a grudge against himself, at times."

"Against God," Vin said.

"You noticed that too, hm? I think my job will be complete when Chris steps more than a foot inside these doors." Josiah and Vin were silent for a while, thinking about that. Then Josiah said, "He'd never believe it, but I think that God brought Chris here. To you, to us. Especially to you." Vin eyed him dubiously. "I think it was part of Chris's healing. Buck, much as he's friends with Chris, will always remind him a little of things he wants to forget. So I kind of think that God put him in this place to heal those sorrows, brought him to you at a time when you also needed a friend."

Then Josiah grinned that madman's grin, shook his head. "Or maybe it don't mean anything at all, and you should ignore everything I say."

"Guess that brings me round to my question. Is he ever going to get better? I got something for him, but I don't see as how giving it to him in this state is gonna help him."

"Mind telling me what it is?"

Vin pulled the doeskin bag out of his pocket. He considered it for a moment before opening it. "She had a room -- it was filled with stuff about Chris. Of his things, too. It was like..."

"A shrine. An altar."

"Yeah. That's it. When Nathan was patching Chris up, I went up there to get his things. I saw that room. I ain't a superstitious man, Josiah, but that room was full of evil. It was everything evil about her. There was pictures of Chris and his family with Sarah's face scratched out or Adam torn out of the picture. She had articles from the paper about the fire. And I found this on the floor." He unfolded the doeskin and pulled up the locket, which glimmered faintly in the low light. "And this picture. Ella must have marked Sarah's face like this."

Josiah took the items from Vin's hand. He looked at the locket, thought of the coldness it would have taken to steal such things from the dying family and bring them to Ella. "Sarah's picture has been removed." Vin was right, it was pure evil. The evil of his own Bible, the darkest part of the human soul.

"We are all exiles from the garden," Josiah said again, softly.

Vin hadn't heard him. "What?"

He shook his head. "I don't know how much of your scripture you recall, but all those things we were thrown out for, we can never escape them. Pride, greed, jealousy, deception. Ella, Chris, all of us, we can only give in to those very sins that led us to fall."

Vin looked down at his hands, considering it again.

"The thing of it is, I don't know if'n I should give them back to Chris, or if it's just going to make him feel worse than he already does. If he's only going to get angrier. And if he's like you said, humiliated, then what's this going to do?"

Josiah weighed his options about what to say. Vin would trust him to know and put more faith in his advice than he could give himself credit for, so he had to be right. He almost felt like the balance of their friendship was in his hands, a friendship he had watched become the salvation of both their lives.

"Yes. I think you should give it to him, but not without an explanation. You need to clear the air -- you need to forgive him."

"Me!" Vin burst out. "What on earth do I got to forgive *him* for?"

"For not listening to you. For not believing in you."

Vin sat quietly, unable to take that thought in. He couldn't understand that he should be the one with the power to forgive. So he turned his thoughts away from that, from the hot-edged knife of pain he'd felt when Chris had shoved him aside as he'd tried to tell him the truth, and said to Josiah, "I been thinking about that house. Her house."

"What to do with it."

Just then the door opened behind them and they turned to see Ezra Standish, dusting off his coat and hat. Josiah was mildly irritated that Ezra always waited until he was *in* the church to dust off, instead of doing it outside.

"Ah. There you are, Mr. Tanner." He sat next to Josiah. "So, what am I interrupting here?"

Vin didn't answer. Josiah wasn't sure if he was avoiding it out of embarrassment or loyalty.

"We were discussing Ella's place, and what we should do with it," Josiah said.

"What do you mean, what we should do with it. I would think that's evident."

Vin frowned at Ezra. "I don't want to know what you're thinking."

"Now, there you go again, assuming I'm only interested in personal gain. This would be for all of us, not just me."

"And what exactly are your plans?" Josiah asked calmly.

"Burn it. To the ground," Vin said bitterly.

"Bur-- You must be joking!" Ezra exclaimed, throwing his hands in the air. "You cannot burn that place down! We simply could not commit such an egregious error. We have a responsibility."

"We ain't the owners," Vin said.

"We are now. We can seize that property as officers of the court. Since a crime was committed there, we have an obligation to take it. And it's a beautiful piece of land and the house is very attractive, as well. A prime opportunity for an investment. And we reap the benefits."

"Off of the suffering of others," Josiah said mildly, fixing his most tolerant but warning gaze on Ezra. But Ezra wasn't going to budge.

"You see, this is the difference between the rest of you and myself. You are all blind to the opportunities that present themselves. Stuck in your prosaic, limited lives with no vision. Have a little vision this time."

"And who exactly would you sell this place to, even assuming you're right and we can do that legally?" Josiah asked.

"There would be plenty of buyers for such a spread. Why, just the other day I was reading that many of the landed English gentry are coming over here to make their fortunes as cattle barons. Especially the ones whose own fortunes are failing fast. The mystique of the west intrigues them, from what they're reading in dime novels and newspaper articles about it. Think of this -- we place an advertisement for Ella's spread, and then we reel in the cash."

Vin glared at him. "You're forgetting people died there. Not to mention the ones who have to find themselves a new place to live. And everything that Chris lost."

"I realize that," Ezra said soothingly. "I have not forgotten that lovely songbird of Buck's, nor have I forgotten all that happened between Chris and Miss Gaines. But the fact remains -- we stand to make up to them for much of what happened, and to help ourselves in the long run. Not make a profit off of others' misery, but maybe to set things right by moving on, moving forward."

They both just stared at Ezra, their brows wrinkled in dismay.

"Oh, now, look here. I know you have this unfailing attraction for the person with a broken wing, Vin. And I realize no one's could be more broken than Mr. Larabee's. But hanging on to that place just to let him shed his demons isn't necessarily the most productive path to choose."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Vin snapped.

"He's saying that you have a soft spot for the wounded and the downtrodden. In just the same way that Chris needs a cause, you seem to want to help the hurt." Josiah sighed heavily. "Unfortunately, for once, Ezra is right in his character assessment."

Ezra bristled, even though it was a compliment of sorts. "I'll have you know that I am a student of the human condition. Just because I'm not a member of the clergy doesn't mean I don't understand what drives people, what motivates them. To be a good confidence man, you must know what makes people tick."

"If you knew what made a man like Chris tick, you wouldn't be telling us to hang on to that place. Everything he suffered is tied up in that land. Everything he can't forget and move on about, until we do something." Vin gave him a challenging glare.

"And selling it off would be doing something about it," Ezra said mildly. "If Chris really is the kind of man who, to use Josiah's words, needs to prosecute a cause, then here's a cause for him -- get rid of that place, move on to better things. Another cause -- say, finding the wicked Miss Gaines and bringing her to justice. Let him move on from the place. And in the meantime we can use the money for something good, for something necessary. I'm not talking about personal gain, about avarice run amok. I'm simply talking about getting something back out of it considering what we -- and the poor unfortunates who suffered her as a family member \-- lost. Do you think any of her husband's relatives inherited his money? Do you think that her husband died of natural causes? They lost a great deal, especially those lovely young ladies who will now likely be tossed around from relative to relative until such time as they can catch a husband."

Josiah just looked at Ezra, not willing to say anything for right now. Ezra wasn't entirely wrong, even if he had the wrong motivations. But Josiah was more inclined to a wrathful revenge, just like Vin, and he wasn't so sure that Chris really could move on until the place was gone, wiped completely off the earth, using the same purging fire that had so altered his own life.

Vin stood and put his hat on, not even looking at Ezra, but up at the altar and the candles burning there. "I ain't even gonna discuss this more with you. It's Chris's decision. Whatever he wants, we're gonna do. Understood?"

Ezra opened his mouth but Vin turned away, and Josiah shrugged at him, holding his palms upward. So Ezra got up and walked behind Vin, following him out the door.

When they got outside the church, Vin turned to Ezra. "What did you want?"

"What?"

"You said you was looking for me. What did you want?"

"Oh, I was merely bored and saw you go into the church. When you didn't come back out I assumed something interesting was going on."

Vin just rolled his eyes and shook his head as he walked away.

 

In the morning, Vin saddled up his horse and rode hard all day in the direction of Red Fork. He hadn't even thought it when he'd gone to bed the night before, but after he awoke, his first notion was to take a look at Ella's place. In some way, he hoped to see if he could put things in order, or begin to understand why any of it had happened and what he could do about it.

Most of his life he'd been removed from the kinds of emotions that seemed to drive other people. He wasn't detached or aloof, only more evenhanded and calm about things, enough so that he could look at most situations from both sides before deciding how to act. That was the one advantage of his lonely upbringing, with the early death of his mother and the loss of his father a while before that. He'd learned to keep things back, to hang on only to what was really important, and act solely on that.

But after coming here and meeting Chris, he'd been acting more on the same kinds of emotions that drove other people. It rubbed at him, this uncontrolled behavior, letting his feelings get the better of him. He knew that one of these days he would get himself into real trouble, something would get the best of him. All because he couldn't separate himself from these people the way he'd always separated himself from others.

Riding out to Ella's spread wasn't likely to accomplish anything at all, but he felt drawn there. And he wanted to see if it was still as empty as it had been when they'd left, her husband's family and friends dispersed to different points in the aftermath of the destruction. They didn't know whether squatters had taken the place over or not, since it was just far enough away to be outside their influence and away from the gossip.

At the edge of her property he crested the hill above the east and looked down at it, the buildings they'd hidden in not so long ago spread out before him, now silent and peaceful. There was still a buggy and a buckboard in the wagon yard, but no horses in the corral or the field behind; the beautiful blacks Chris had been working to train long gone. He couldn't see the bunkhouse in detail, but imagined the wall to be still full of holes from the ambush.

When it had gone down, he hadn't even been a full mile away. He'd heard the riders from a distance, something that hadn't sounded right. Too many horses, too much noise for it to be anything but a great many men riding with a purpose. He'd doubled back, worried for Chris most of all, and when he got there saw the ambush on the bunkhouse and rode ahead, firing, as fearful as he'd ever felt, the hollow in the pit of his gut spreading out into his body, making him feel like jelly.

It had been the one time he'd doubted himself, doubted the rest of them and whether they could beat the odds. Seeing Chris shot in front of him and watching him hesitate with Ella, remembering his own hesitation, only shamed him more. He could have shot Ella as easily as Chris could have, but he'd been afraid in that instant that if he'd done it Chris would never have forgiven him. Then Chris had been hit and all Vin could even think about was Chris's safety, so had missed his only chance. He'd not known then just how far things had gone with Chris and Ella, but knew enough about her then to know what she was and what she was doing to Chris.

His horse began to pace restlessly on the overlook, pulling hard at the bit and stepping sideways. He ran his hand down its neck, trying to calm it, but that didn't work. The horse began to step back hard, trying to rear. And strangely enough, Vin thought he could feel something, as well, something that made him almost equally nervous. Maybe there was an animal nearby, a puma or a bear, something big enough to frighten it this way. He looked around, trotted the horse over to the other side, but could see nothing there. Still he felt as nervous as the animal, and he pulled the Winchester out of the scabbard and cocked it, just to be safe.

As he rode toward the porch he called out, "Hello, the house!" and waited a moment to see if anyone came at the call. By the time he got to the front the horse was so anxious he had to tie it hard to the railing, fighting with it all the way. He could still see nothing there, but he cautiously went inside anyway, feeling trepidation overcome him in small waves. The living room was nearly as they'd left it after everyone had dispersed to other points, with a few things left haphazardly lying around. Dust was slowly covering everything, leaving a blanket of time behind.

The hairs on the back of his neck and his arms were standing up. It was as if Ella's evil had seeped in here, between the floorboards and the cracks in the walls, the edges of the window panes, the way sand did in a desert storm. He wasn't so certain about a spirit world, but he wondered now if the people Ella had hurt could have come back here. Ghosts seemed more probable to him now than ever before.

Hilda's piano stood over by the stairs, the key lid still open. Vin went over and pushed the keys tunelessly, listening to the sound echo unpleasantly through the empty room. He closed the lid and went upstairs.

In all that strange, unreal time afterwards, before they'd left, he'd never gone all the way into Ella's room to pick everything up. The room she'd shared with Chris. It had embarrassed him, how overcome with irritation he'd been then, how jealous. Vin opened the door slowly, peering inside. There was the bed, still unmade, and nearby on a chair, Ella's watered silk dress that she'd worn that night. The waistcoat from Chris's suit -- the one *she'd* made him wear -- lay on the floor near that, the jacket tossed casually at the end of the bed.

He'd taken Chris's rig that day, his hat, shirt, and boots, and left everything else behind, too worried and angry and hurt to care about anything else.

Vin felt disgusted with himself, with their actions, and it welled up bitterly in his throat. He closed the door behind him and walked over to the room where Ella had kept all of Chris's things. He very slowly opened that door and stepped in, feeling the presence of something cold and bleak here. Items were still strewn around the floor; he'd put away nothing nor ordered it when he'd been here before. He searched through the contents of the table, the shelves, looking for anything that Chris might yet want. Only photographs remained of the family, ones where Sarah had been torn out roughly, or Adam's face marked out. He didn't take those; everything else was newspaper clippings of the tragedy, or items of Chris's. Nothing he wanted Chris to have as a memento of pain.

Feeling more and more spooked, Vin left, nearly as jumpy as his horse, which was sidestepping back and forth, pulling at the bit. Maybe, Vin began to think, someone really was here; not just ghosts. He couldn't imagine Ella being careless enough to come back here, and anyway, it was too fanciful to think that she was so awful a woman she could panic a horse. He was clearly letting his imagination run wild in the silliest way.

Nonetheless, he held the rifle in front of him and walked toward the bunkhouse. There had been a root cellar, he remembered Buck saying. Maybe someone was hiding down there. He went in, brushing the cobwebs away with his hand, then stood still for a long time, listening carefully. With better hearing than almost anyone he knew, he should be able to tell if someone was down there without lifting up the cellar door. It was too foolhardy to open it himself without someone to back him up. After listening for a long time, Vin could hear nothing. He closed the main door and made some noise, seeing if he could trick someone into thinking he'd left, but nothing stirred below the cellar door. Finally he gave up, his skin still prickling.

Quickly going to his horse, he mounted up and spurred the horse hard, wanting to get out of there as fast as he possibly could. He would have to make camp tonight before he could make it back to Chris's place, but he wanted to get as far away from here as possible. Whether it was a haunt or he was just being silly and superstitious, even if it was just an animal or someone hiding there, he wished to put as many miles between himself and Ella's spread as he could. Whether he'd sleep tonight was another subject altogether.

By the time he'd ridden miles away and dusk was falling across the horizon, Vin made camp, slightly calmer. He was still spooked and nervous, although he couldn't reconcile to himself why. If anyone else had been there, he'd have been embarrassed. Or maybe they too would feel the same way? He made himself coffee, cooked some beans and threw in a little salt pork, then settled in, wondering if he could sleep after that. It would be embarrassing to tell Chris about this, so he would best keep this to himself when he stopped by Chris's tomorrow. He'd hoped to bring some news, maybe that he'd found more things of Sarah's that Chris would want, but now all he had was this ridiculous story to tell. And that, he was keeping to himself. In order to sleep soundly, he put the yellowboy next to his hand, and the cut-down rifle even closer.

In the morning he hit the trail before dawn had broken completely, hoping to reach Chris's before he might leave -- although Vin had no reason to believe that Chris was going anywhere, especially in light of his behavior recently. Vin kept thinking back to what Josiah and Ezra had said, trying to make some sense of it, but he truly didn't understand their way of thinking. To him, people were just people, and you dealt with them however they needed to be dealt with. He didn't look at them and decide that they must be hurting, and he was the one to fix them. And Vin didn't think Chris looked at folks that way, either.

But Josiah and Ezra were the kind of men who spent entirely too much time thinking about things, looking at them from every angle. They were smarter than the rest of the boys, smart about how people were, so he couldn't completely ignore what they were saying. Vin hated the idea of being examined like that, of having other people tell him about himself, but he wasn't dead certain they were wrong about either him or Chris. And something about being known by others frightened him as much as the skin-crawling sensation of evil he'd felt yesterday at Ella's.

 

Already the corral was a shambles. The chair on the porch was smashed and the new lumber that he'd been cutting was strewn everywhere. Chris didn't feel any improvement for having spent the better part of yesterday hurling everything around, so today he was taking an axe to it, just to see if that helped.

It wasn't helping. He swung wildly, smashing the corral railings and hurling pieces of wood everywhere, then began whacking at the porch. The more he swung and the more damage he did to all the hard work and money he'd put into this place, the less satisfaction he got, but he didn't stop. He began to bellow, screaming with a rage that came from some dark place beneath his soul, yelling and swinging the axe, kicking at everything. And finally he began to tire, feeling the tears of rage swelling up and over the edge of what tiny shred of control he had left. He dropped to his knees, throwing the detritus away from him, letting the tears come out as hard and fast as the shouts.

He was sick of it all. Sick of them, sick of the misery, sick of being in this place and being reminded day after day of what he'd lost. Reminded of how foolish he'd been, how humiliatingly blind. That he'd been willing to throw Vin's friendship in his face, to turn his back on all of them, to embarrass Mary by flouting her affection for him. And most of all, to be human, to be failingly, abysmally human, to suffer the same pride and stupidity that everyone else did.

He couldn't afford to be that human. He had to lead these men, had to stay on the course of his mission to find his family's murderers and bring them to justice. He'd had that in his hand, and his pride, his vanity and willful blindness, had made him let go of it, grains of sand slipping between his open fingers.

If he could let go of the memory of Vin's face, the way he'd seemed to shut himself off when Chris had hollered at him that night, he might at least take a few steps forward. But he couldn't let go of it, couldn't stop thinking of how betrayed Vin had clearly been, how disappointed in Chris he was. And then the look of pure disgust when he'd reminded Chris that he should have shot Ella when he had the chance. All the words that lived underneath what Vin wasn't saying, harsh words and pained words that hid, waiting to pounce. Vin had only ever tried to protect him, to help him, and Chris's response to such a friendship was cruelty and rejection.

Standing up, Chris threw the axe as far as he could, screaming out loud. All of this was pointless, it was nothing to him now. He'd betrayed Sarah's and Adam's memory, shared the bed of the very person who'd been responsible for their horrible deaths. He'd kicked Vin and Buck down like they were dogs when they tried to help him, and he'd let Ella get away. He couldn't even begin to atone for his sins because they were too great, they were the deadliest of sins.

Even if he tried to scream and cry it all out, it would only come back to him. Chris stood in the middle of his empty land, amid the rubble of his rage, and sobbed.

Vin had been riding through the trees just outside of Chris's land when he heard loud, cracking sounds -- wood being splintered, an axe chunking into something heavy. Then he heard Chris screaming, knew that distinctive bellow almost as well as he knew his own voice by now, and he spurred his horse hard, running straight through into the clearing while drawing his gun. There he saw Chris standing, hands at his sides, head down, body shaking and jerking. It took Vin a moment to realize that everything around him was smashed and broken, but there was no one else nearby to have caused such damage. He dismounted, holstering the gun, and stood there dumbly, not knowing what to say to Chris.

Clearly Chris knew he was there, but he made no effort to even look at him. Just stood there as Vin realized he was battling back wracking sobs. He walked toward him, hand outstretched. "Chris," he said quietly. "Chris, it's just me."

Hands clenched into fists, unclenched, and then Chris looked up at him, a hank of blond hair fallen in front of his eyes. He said nothing, but he didn't have to, really, Vin suddenly understood. Josiah was right, Chris was eating away at himself over his failures, humiliated, enraged, not at them, but at himself.

Vin walked toward him, closer, and Chris recoiled. He didn't mean to, but he was ashamed again, frightened of showing such naked emotion, especially in front of Vin. No one else thought so much of Chris, he knew that. Not even Buck, who'd seen him through the worst of times. That he couldn't live up to Vin's expectations of him, his own hopes for their friendship... Chris felt like the biggest failure of all. And still Vin stood there, concerned, not moving away from him.

Then Chris stalked over to the south wall and stood against it, gulping in air, his back pressed tightly to the wood. What kind of a stupid thing had he done now? If Vin doubted his sanity before, he'd most certainly want to keep his distance after this. How could he have let himself get so wild?

Just as he slid down the wall, Vin came up and stood beside him, sliding down next to him, taking his hat off and then putting his hands on his knees. "Been having a tantrum?"

Chris laughed bitterly behind his tears, a hiccuping sound coming out instead. "Yeah. A bit of one."

"You managed to undo all your work in one big fit, haven't you?" Vin sounded mildly amused instead of disgusted, and Chris couldn't figure out why he was being so soft.

He wiped at his face, the grime and tears mingling in streaks across his face. "Aw, Vin. I'm a fool."

"Nope. I'd do the same myself."

"Naw, you wouldn't. You got a better head on your shoulders. I'm the one always going off half-cocked." He took some deep, gulping breaths. Vin held out a canteen that he'd somehow managed to produce out of nowhere, gave it to Chris, and he swallowed the water down harshly.

"Chris. All this hiding, all this being angry at everything and everyone. Are you...is this because you think we all look down at you? Because you think we think you're a fool?"

Chris turned to look at him then, really look at him, and saw something he'd never thought to see. Even after all this, Vin still trusted him somehow.

"I don't know, Vin," he answered slowly. "I don't know anymore. It's just... I keep thinking of it. What I said to you. Who I let down. That I shared a bed with her, that I thought I cared for her." His voice cracked again, he could feel the tears of shame creeping back up inside him.

Vin put a gentle hand on his shoulder, squeezing it. "You don't got to explain." He looked at Chris's haunted eyes and thought of what he'd felt yesterday at Ella's place.

Taking his hand away, he then pulled out of his pocket the small doeskin bag and held it toward Chris. "I got something I wanted you to have. I been thinking about this, wondering if I should give it to you when you was feeling this way. Maybe I'm making a mistake, maybe it's only going to hurt you some more. But I thought you should at least see it. Then you can tell me if I was wrong."

Chris took the bag from his hand and opened it. He pulled out the locket and held it up to the sun, twisting it this way and that. Then he pulled out the picture. Even though Ella had damaged Sarah's face in it, Chris traced his fingertips over the image as if absorbing it through his fragile skin.

"When Nathan was patching you up, I went up there. I saw that room. These things was on the floor with some other stuff. Looked like you'd had a fight or something. Wasn't hard to figure out what happened. And before we left, I took these for you."

Chris held the items in his hand, staring emptily at them. Once again he was stunned by Vin. He'd never understood who this man really was, the true depths of what he was capable of doing and feeling. Shame washed over him again in a violent wave as he thought about what he'd said to Vin at Ella's, how quickly he had dismissed him. That Vin had supported him every step of the way since then -- had saved his life, had tried to find Ella, had tried to help him heal -- only served to make him feel unworthy.

Looking sideways at Vin, he said, "I can't believe I said those things to you, and you're doing all this for me. I'm ashamed at how I treated you and Buck."

"You don't got to apologize. You had feelings for her. None of us knew she was that bad, not even me. I didn't trust her at the beginning, but I'd never have expected that someone could do the things she done."

Making a fist around the locket, Chris put his hand against his chest and lowered his head. He could only whisper, his strength had left him completely. "I should have seen it. Should have understood what all those strange things meant. But I didn't want to. I forgot everything Sarah taught me, everything I learned about love. I didn't even honor her memory and just went to Ella without even thinking it through."

There was no response from Vin in return, and eventually Chris looked up to see Vin studying him carefully.

"Did I --" Vin said after a time, "did I make it worse when I told you you shoulda shot her?"

Chris shook his head in bewilderment. "What?"

"You was reading her letter." Chris had never told Vin what was in the letter, or anyone else for that matter; it only made him more ashamed and bitter and helplessly angry. "I told you you should have shot her when you had the chance and you said 'next time.' I figured on how that was only making it harder for you to get better -- that you been hating us all for all this time, not letting yourself get better."

He let a small, harsh laugh escape. "You been talking to Josiah again, haven't you?"

Vin shrugged and looked away. "Didn't know what to do. You gonna be angry at me about that, too?" But there was a light in his eyes when he looked back at Chris.

"Wasn't really steamed. Just ashamed and foolish. And... everyone expects something from me. Everyone wants a piece of me. Bucks wants me to forget and move on. Josiah wants me to forgive God. Mary wants something I can't give. Ella wanted me to be some picture of who she thought I was, and she was willing to kill for it. Sometimes I think there isn't a body around who don't want something from me. Except you. You're the only one who's never seemed to want anything from me, till now. I don't know what to do about it. I liked it better when you didn't want anything."

Vin looked hard at him, unflinchingly, despite what Chris said. "The only thing I ever wanted from you was your friendship. I had that up till Ella came along, and for a while it's been like you took it away. All's I want is to have it back," he said flatly.

All Chris could muster was a rueful smile. "You never lost it. I just couldn't find my way along. Ain't your fault."

Nodding, Vin looked away. "You really think everyone wants a piece of you?"

"I've seen everyone's faces. That's all I ever see, every damn day. The way the boys look at me, the way I let you down. I can't get away from all those faces and their eyes expecting something from me."

"You let *me* down? That what you think?"

"Didn't I? You tried to tell me."

"Weren't much more to tell than that she was a liar. The rest of it, I was as blind as you."

Chris smoothed his hands over the knees of his pants, the dust rising up in a cloud around his hands. "I was, wasn't I? Blind. Acting no better than Buck when he sees a pretty face."

"You were in love with her once. That's a mighty big difference in my book."

He looked away, past the line of brush at the edge of his property, and Vin watched him carefully. "Mary looks at me that way, too. I know what she's thinking of me."

Vin couldn't argue with that, much as he wished to. Mary would feel differently about him. Everything that had happened, she'd have heard about, and so many of the expectations she had about Chris would have changed.

There were Rules here, rules they all followed, that ruled their lives. Mary had broken a number of them -- spending time in the saloon, time alone with men -- but she was in a position in the town that she could sometimes break them. Not this time, this rule would not allow her to break it. Even she knew this rule was a brittle eggshell held in her hand, one she couldn't let go of or mishandle, or it would spill itself all over the ground. She had to Stay Back, she had to Let Chris Be, and she could not talk about her feelings for him. Not with him, not with anybody else.

And Chris knew his side of the Rules; he was not allowed to stay in that same place with her he'd been in before, pretending they were friends, wondering if they'd be anything else. Now he had to move along, because he had rejected her as his potential object of affection, had thrown himself into the web of a spider, right in front of Mary, and they were both caught on the spider's silk, spun in it and sucked dry of life. He had caught Mary's hopes and feelings in the web, had dragged them along with him on their silky wings. No words of apology could change the rules. Now they had to Move Along. Move Forward. Alone.

Would Chris be heartbroken over this? How far had his affections for Mary gone? Chris kept his own counsel about that and Vin didn't ask questions, but now he wondered. Mary had asked Vin a few times when they had met to learn his letters, in her subtle, lady-like way. But Vin knew what she'd been asking under the heart of it. She was aware that she'd lost Chris, and Vin wondered if she'd known at the beginning. He'd seen her recoil from Ella; maybe there was something ladies recognized in each other, something none of the men had seen. But it was too late, anyways, Chris had already been gone by then and nothing Mary could have said would have stopped it.

Vin wondered if he would have been as sad if Chris had said he was staying with Mary, the way he'd felt when Chris had said he was staying on with Ella. Was it just that he hadn't liked Ella, or that he simply didn't want Chris to go?

Those weren't even things he should be thinking about, though. Right now, he needed to be Chris's friend, and Chris needed to be his.

"You never let me down, if that's what you think," Vin said gently, and put his hand again on Chris's shoulder. "Here all this time, I been thinking you're angry because I didn't find Ella, because we knew things about her. That all I did was to let you down, only you been worrying at the same thing."

It surprised him that Chris made no motion to shrug off his hand, so he squeezed once and then pulled away.

Chris said, "What do you think happened to her?"

"I found her as far as the railroad. I think she followed the tracks to the nearest station and got herself a train, and paid people to keep quiet. With her money, that'd be no trouble at all. And that's one thing even I can't track."

"I think she thought it was all taken care of. That she had no idea I wouldn't stay with her even if I found out." He said bitterly, his teeth clenched tightly so the words came out in guttural sounds, "She seemed so damn surprised."

"She's not right in the head, Chris. She probably thought you'd be flattered."

Chris studied Vin for a while. "You're right. That's exactly the way she acted." He shook his head. "I shoulda listened to you and Buck. Now poor Hilda's dead, Ella's still out there, and I've completely dishonored my family. I'm a sorry excuse for a man."

Vin leaned over and put his face nearly in front of Chris's, very close, forcing Chris to lift his head and look him in the eye. "You know better than that."

"I have these dreams, Vin," Chris said of a sudden, as if he was in a rush to unburden himself of something. "I dream of Sarah and Adam, and even though I can't quite see their faces anymore in the day, at night in sleep, I remember. It's never the same dream, they're always different. Sometimes it's just a memory of something that happened, sometimes it's like today, and they're back. We all know they're dead, but they're both here anyways, like it's normal. I keep trying to figure out what they all mean, but I can't understand it."

"Feels like you're being haunted?"

"No, not bad like that. Just dreams of our life, I suppose. Like I have a life with them still."

Vin merely nodded, letting Chris know he understood, which seemed to be all Chris needed.

Then he rose and dusted off the seat of his trousers. "I'll tell you what. I'm gonna ride into town and get some cut lumber. You find some green wood for that corral. I'll let the boys know I'll be out here for a few days, helping you. If they need us, they'll know where to come."

Chris looked up at him and smiled, then rose to stand in front of him. "You're a good friend, Vin. Better than I deserve."

Vin gave a little shake of his head in response, but he smiled nonetheless.

"I suppose you're going to expect me to give you some money," Chris said playfully.

"I could take that horse of yours and go sell it, if you want." Seeing that smile again after all this time was thrilling.

"Touch that horse and I'll skin you alive." Chris reached out and knocked Vin on the shoulder, almost laughing.

Vin poked him back. "You're forgettin' I know where you keep your money." He made as if he was going to the house where Chris's coat was hanging. "Inside pocket of that big, black coat. And you got a special stash of bills inside your hat."

Chris lunged after him and grabbed him by the arm, such a happy look on his face Vin thought he looked almost boyish. They tussled for a few moments, laughing, but when Vin's hand came up on Chris's collarbone, he let it linger for a moment. They stood there looking at each other, taking panting breaths, and then Vin became dimly aware of his hand on Chris's chest, and he let it slide slowly down. Both of them stopped breathing for just a moment, looking at each other, waiting for something, until Vin's hand fell away completely. Chris cleared his throat and looked away, and Vin shifted on his feet.

He smacked his hat against his hand a few times, then put it on and walked over to his horse. Coming over to him, Chris put his hand out and Vin clasped Chris's forearm above the wrist, and Chris did the same in return. They stood like that for a moment, looking at each other, before Vin moved away. He turned to look at Chris as he mounted, smiled again, then touched his fingers to his hat in acknowledgement. Chris held the locket and photograph up, secure in his hand, and nodded at Vin, a look of gratitude on his face that warmed Vin's heart.

 

Buck Wilmington looked up from his hand through the distance of the window to see Vin dismounting his horse. He fanned the cards on the table. "I've seen better hands on a duck," he said, while JD Dunne looked at him quizzically.

"Ducks don't have hands," JD said seriously.

"Well now, son, that would be my point, I believe. Neither do I!" He shoved the cards away.

"I swear, Buck, the things you say are getting stranger and stranger every day."

"His metaphors and similes are growing strained, is what you're trying to say," Ezra said, moving the cards in his hand around.

Ignoring them, Buck said, "Here comes our wayward traveler." He got up to greet Vin, and Ezra put his cards on the table, making noises of objection.

"You cannot simply leave in the middle of a hand," he said grumpily, although by now JD was following suit and walking out behind Buck. Ezra sighed theatrically and joined them. At least he could find out what Vin had decided about the Petrie house and stop anyone from doing anything foolish.

Vin walked past the three of them, though, and straight to the bar, where he ordered a whisky. He still hadn't shaken the concern he'd felt the day before out at Ella's place.

Buck slapped him on the back and Vin nodded at the three of them. "Boys."

"So where you been, pard? Josiah said you took off for parts unknown."

"I went and had a look-see at Ella's place." He knocked back the shot and took another one. "Ezra and I got a disagreement over what we should do with it."

JD looked skeptically at both of them. "Well, what could we do with it? I mean, it's not ours to decide, is it?"

When JD said that, Vin cast a look at Ezra, who responded with mock surprise.

"I merely pointed out to Mr. Tanner that we have the right to take control of it, and that we should at least make amends for some of the terrible events there by selling it and providing the money to the family members Miss Gaines so cruelly cast adrift."

Shaking his head, Vin said, "Ezra, you think too much. And it wears me down."

"I don't mean to come in in the middle of this, but I don't know as we have the right to make decisions like that," Buck said.

"That's what I'm trying to tell him," Vin said wearily. "That it's Chris's decision."

Ezra threw up his hands. "If you all choose to remain ignorant of the possibilities, then I can do nothing more. I despair at your inability to see anything but what is right in front of your faces." He turned away, muttering what sounded to Vin like "hopeless cretins," but Vin didn't pay him anymore mind.

Just then Nathan walked up. Ezra pointed an accusing finger at Nathan. "And you! I know just what you're thinking, and it is incorrect!"

Nathan held out his hands in a confused gesture, as all the boys laughed. He didn't ask what was going on, which was typical of him. He would just wait it out to get the gist of the conversation, something Vin admired in him.

"I don't know as I want to have that place on my hands, even for a little while. A lot of bad things happened there," Buck said quietly and sadly. "I'd almost say it was evil, but no place that Hilda was a part of could be evil."

Nathan looked at Buck with concern, and the rest nodded in agreement. No one really knew what to say to such a sentiment, it seemed that too many people lost something along the way there. Chris and Buck most obviously, but Vin wondered if they knew how close he'd come to losing something as well, something not obvious to anyone but him and Chris.

"Superstition won't help feed those family members displaced by Miss Gaines's actions." Ezra was beginning to wonder if anyone would ever think his motives for anything were decent and morally above reproach. At least Chris he expected to mistrust him with matters of money, but that the rest of them still didn't understand he could have honest intentions irked him no end.

Nathan said quietly, "We can talk about that when Chris gets back to his old self. Wouldn't be honorable to do anything else, and that place'll keep. Folks think there's a ha'nt, they won't be wanting nothing to do with it for the time being. What's a couple days waiting for Chris?"

"And where is our old friend these days?" Buck asked. "Last I saw of him he was stomping off in another huff."

"He's back at his place. He -- well, he was... he did some damage to it. Got real crazy and just wrecked it."

Buck laughed loudly, slapping his hand against his thigh. "Old Chris, he always was a bit hard on the furnishings."

JD looked sideways at Buck, his eyebrows raised and his mouth open.

"Ah, it don't mean anything," Buck said, looking at JD. "That's the way he is. Means he's getting better, really. Once he throws himself a real tantrum, he's on his way to mending."

"I told him I'd come on into town and see if y'all could do without us for a few days. I'd get some lumber and go back and help him fix things up a bit," Vin said. "Think you can manage?"

"Ah, well, I don't know. What do you think, JD?"

"Well, gee, Mr. Tanner, do you think we can?" JD asked, and Vin knocked him on the shoulder with his fist, smiling.

"You'll know where we are if anything comes along," Vin said as he wandered out the door.

They watched him walk away, and JD trailed Ezra back to the table. Nathan paused for a moment, looking at Buck, and Buck returned his look with confusion.

"You be getting all sad again, ain't you?" Nathan asked. "Every time we mention Miss Hilda, you get that look. Guess you really did have feelings for her."

Buck nodded, gazing back out the door of the saloon. "I know you probably thought those words I said to her weren't but a bunch of hooey to make her feel better because she was dying. But they were the truth."

Nathan put his large hand on Buck's shoulder and patted it a few times. "You a sweet-talker, Buck, but you ain't no liar. I knew you meant every word. And you know it helped her, to know she was loved at the end."

Buck shook his head. "I waited too long. Why do we always have to wait till it's too late to do the right thing?" he asked, not really to Nathan but to no one in particular. Just to hear himself say it and know that it was true.

 

When Vin returned to Chris's place, he could hear the sounds of hammering even before he got into the clearing. He hollered a greeting before coming into the clear, and Chris stood up, shielding his eyes with his hand, watching Vin as he rode in with the buckboard of lumber behind him.

It was as if he saw a different person here, as if the two men he'd seen standing in this same spot, just today, were separate people. One angry and wretched, the other strong and serene. He liked all these qualities in Chris, but they were better when balanced among each other, when no one characteristic overruled the other.

He dismounted and the two silently began unloading the lumber. It was getting late in the day, even on these drawn-out summer evenings, but he didn't feel tired in spite of the heat and what they'd been through already in the day.

Once they'd finished stacking everything, Chris dusted off his hands and asked Vin if he was hungry, noting that it was long past supper.

He hadn't really thought about it, but he'd had nothing to eat all day so he agreed eagerly. Chris was a pretty decent cook, he'd come to learn, maybe because of Sarah's influence. Vin washed up at the bucket of water Chris had drawn.

They took their food outside when it was ready, sitting on the ground as they watched the sun set over the tree tops. Vin sipped at his coffee, enjoying the quiet of this place, listening to the crickets chirping and the horses eating. He could see why Chris liked it here and how much he needed a place like this away from town, away from the boys. After he'd been married and had a true family life, he would need a place with roots, with soil he could feel underneath his feet and know that it was his, that there was room for him to grow.

After a time, Vin asked Chris gently, "What was it like? Being married, I mean."

Chris looked out toward the west, following the line of pink and gold on the horizon. No one had ever asked him a question like this before. "It was... the only words I know make it sound so boring. Content. Comfortable. Happy. They sound boring, don't they? But they're not." He thought for a while, trying to come up with something else, but he couldn't. "I never knew what I wanted when I was younger. I was always raising hell, looking for something without knowing what it was. And then when I married Sarah, I finally figured out that I really just wanted someone to know me. And to know someone else, to know what they were like inside."

Vin watched him carefully as he said this. Chris could see that out of the corner of his eye; a look of quiet mystery on Vin's face. Vin had lived a very isolated life, and those questions came from the heart of someone who'd never known such feelings.

"I think Adam was like that, too. Even though he was so little, he knew me, trusted me. When you see your child, who they're becoming as they grow older... I don't know a word for it, but there's something that happens to you, a warmth in your heart. It was wonderful, being married." He looked at Vin and smiled sadly. "You're the only person who's ever asked me about the good parts. Everyone wants to talk about the sadness and the loss. No one ever asks me what it was like to feel that good."

Vin ran his fingers through his long hair, looking away. Chris wondered if he'd pushed Vin over a line, had made him feel embarrassed for asking or for seeing Chris so soppy. But then he said, "I'm glad you had that. Sorry as hell you lost it, but I'm glad you had that, at least once."

It would be too easy to get choked up listening to Vin say such things, so he got up and took the tin plate from him. "Getting on time for bed," he said, trying to disguise the hitch in his voice.

"Think I'll sleep out here in front of the porch," Vin said, getting up and grabbing his blanket and a bedroll out of the buckboard. He set to work building a small fire to keep the varmints off while Chris went inside and put things away. As he lit the Lucifer match and watched the flames flicker and play upwards over the kindling, he thought of what Chris was saying, and how much he'd lost. It was a wonder Chris got on with his life in any respect. To be lonely and then to have such love in your life, only to lose it, was too painful for any human to bear. Even if it hadn't been in a fire, if it had just been illness or a common accident, it would still be unbearable. And then to confront the person responsible for such loss, to think you loved her...

He heard Chris behind him on the porch as he pulled the blanket up over his shoulders, but Chris didn't say anything. Chris stood there for a while, silently, until Vin heard the door creak, but there was no distinct sound of it closing. Maybe it would make Chris feel more at peace to have the door open, knowing Vin was out here. And this, he began to understand, was the sign that he had Chris's friendship back. No doors between them now, just back where they'd been before.

In the morning Vin woke just as dawn began to lightly paint the sky. He walked to the little creek Chris drew water from to fill the bucket and splash off a little, knowing the day's work would wring a sweat out of both of them. Even though Chris was what Vin considered a dandy, with his nice clothes and that fancy rig, spurs, and tack, he wasn't generally fussy about things in other people. Nevertheless, Vin didn't enjoy feeling like a dirt-rolling hog next to him; something about Chris's characteristics brought out different behavior.

By the time he got back to the house Chris was cooking up some biscuits, which smelled heavenly, and some of his thick, black coffee. In just this short time together, Vin was already feeling as if he belonged here. Something intangible in the way Chris didn't really say anything but acknowledged his presence, silently though warmly, made him feel more like he'd found exactly his right place than anything he'd ever experienced before. It was similar to only one time in his life -- the same sense of completion, of knowing his destiny, that he'd felt when he'd first decided to go to the Seminole village with Chris, way back when. The thought gave Vin a little shiver. Thinking about fate and destiny always made him feel a little strange.

Chris pointed to the side of the building, the way two of the boards hung raggedly down like splinters, cracked nearly down the middle. "Thinking we should start there."

Vin nodded, hefting a hammer in the air and catching it, and they set to work. By midday they had the outside wall damage repaired, and moved on to the porch after a brief break for grub. Vin whistled at the holes Chris had managed to punch in the flooring of the porch. "What'd you use on this? Your shotgun?"

"Yeah, but not that end. I was swinging it like an axe." He grinned.

Vin shook his head in wonderment. "You're something when you get going, I'll give you that."

"Guess it don't do to get me on my bad side, does it?"

"Just so long as you don't point nothin' in my direction, you're okay."

Chris kept ripping up the ruined boards while they spoke, then they lapsed into silence, which was not what he wished for now. Chris wanted Vin to talk, on and on. He looked over at Vin. "Tell me about your early days."

This surprised Vin, and he looked curiously at Chris. "What do you mean?"

"Just... what did you do when you were younger? How'd you get to buffalo hunting? Or chasing after bounties?"

Vin stopped for a moment, looking at Chris with bafflement, before answering. For a moment Chris wanted to laugh, Vin seemed so confused and surprised, but he stifled his amusement because he knew that would destroy any desire to talk Vin would have. Chris liked the sound of his voice, its rasping, dry quality, and it was rare to hear him use it for longer than a sentence or two. He knew there was a real storyteller in Vin hiding behind that quiet, thoughtful front, even beyond the poems he'd written for Mary's newspaper and the hunting stories he frequently told Billy Travis. Someone interesting lived there inside him, someone who deserved to be listened to, and Chris enjoyed doing the listening.

Once Vin got going, they rambled away the early part of the afternoon swapping tales, until they heard some commotion coming from the western part of the property. Both went quickly for their guns, when they heard the sound of Buck's voice, arguing with someone else -- most likely JD -- and then a booming wail, "Buck coming in!"

Just as expected, Buck and JD burst through the treeline, already in the middle of another good-natured argument. Chris looked at Vin and they shrugged in unison, trying not to laugh. It had been a while since Chris had felt like laughing. In less than a full day, Vin had changed him back. He no longer felt as though he would buckle under the weight of his shame and failures; instead, he was a man who could laugh at the liveliness of his friends, who could happily appreciate the stories of someone he cared for and wanted to know better. Everything is different now, he realized, looking from Vin to Buck and JD as they dismounted their horses and tied them to a broken corral rail.

Buck slapped his shoulder and said loudly, "Vin told us you been making this place a real showcase!"

Chris smiled at him benignly. "What brings you two out this way, Buck?" He'd always found that ignoring Buck's smart comments was the best way to get him on a different tack.

JD was wandering off to inspect the damage around the corral, and Vin just stayed put behind Chris, waiting to hear.

"Well, we had a spot of trouble right after Vin came back. Had ourselves a visitor to town who got a little roostered up and tried to take advantage of Miss Sally. He hurt her bad, and Josiah and I didn't take much of a likin' to that."

Behind him, Vin chuckled softly. "How bad did you hurt him?"

"Aw, no more'n he hurt her. Nathan says she's got a couple busted ribs, broken collarbone, and her face looks like a pulp. All because she didn't want to go to his room with him. She ain't no working girl, she told him that. Anyways, he tried to take a shot at JD there, and we hauled his behind right into the jail."

JD had found his way back to them and he nodded at Buck's story. "He was real wild. Most commotion we seen since the governor came to town."

"You thinking you need help?" Chris asked, trying to figure out what Buck was here for.

"Nah, that ain't what I'm here about," Buck said. He sat down on the porch and dusted off his hat. "I just wanted to check in and see when you two'd be back in town. I got this feeling..."

JD jumped in as Buck trailed off. "There's something familiar about him. None of us can place it, even Mr. Standish thinks we should know who he is, but we can't figure it out. And he ain't giving us a real name, that's for sure."

Vin asked, "You wire the judge?"

"Yup, he'll be back, but not for a couple more days." Buck sighed. "It just sticks in my mind, and I can't get it out. Something's familiar about this good-for-nothing. And I ain't exactly predisposed to doing anything kindly to him to find out."

"No, you ain't going to waste your silver tongue on him, I'm sure of that. We can hold him for as long as it takes," Chris said testily. "He did that much damage to a saloon girl, he ain't going anywhere, as far as I'm concerned. Just wait for the judge -- he always says he never forgets a face."

"Well, that's true, but if you boys saw your way to coming in tomorrow, maybe..."

Vin nodded. "We'll be done by then. Don't worry."

"Well, I ain't exactly *worried*, Vin, I'm just looking for a little help." But he was laughing when he said it.

They walked back to the horses. Buck motioned his head to the left a little, and JD caught the look, so he walked around past the small house and loudly asked Chris to show him how far his property ran. Chris gave them a befuddled frown, but went with JD to walk him around.

Buck turned to Vin and asked, "He getting any better?" He'd gone from loud and brash to gently concerned, something that tended to make Vin's head spin at times.

Scratching his head, Vin paused for a moment before answering. "I think maybe so. He's actually laughing today."

"Been a long time since I seen him so down on himself. Not since Sarah and Adam died, and he spent the next couple of years inside a bottle. I was worried this thing with Ella... well, I wondered if he could get back on his own feet."

"Takes him a while, I reckon. But he's too strong for that."

At the edge of his line of sight, Buck watched Chris and JD walking around, Chris pointing at things, proud of his place. "Yeah, but strength only goes so far. Some things you can't get over. Even though I know it ain't my business, I think you helped."

Surprised, Vin pulled his head back a little and looked at Buck quizzically. "Aw, I don't think so."

"Nope, you got that wrong. You been a good friend to him, in just the way he needs it. You two are a lot alike."

"No, we ain't. He just needs people to give him some room to breathe. He said that everyone wants a piece of him. I think that was all he wanted, just some room."

Stopping and turning, Buck looked hard at Vin, a funny smile on his face. "You can say what you want, but I've known Chris a mighty long time. And I know when something's changed him."

Vin was mute with surprise, not knowing what he could say to that. Buck turned away from him and undid the reins, then grabbed at JD's horse.

"JD! We are getting ourselves on the trail right now!" he bellowed toward the other two.

Vin and Chris watched them go, and Chris turned to him and asked, "You think we can finish all this by tonight?"

"Ah, no problem. We're almost done now anyways. You finish the porch and I'll do these railings."

He would have enjoyed staying next to Vin, but Chris knew they had work to do before they could get back to town and they'd best get to it. From the far end of his property he'd watched Buck and Vin talking, wondering what they could be saying to each other, and if they were talking about him or just passing the time. He wasn't prone to thinking that everything related to him, but it was the way Buck and Vin would look in his direction, or the way they smiled, that made him wonder. And it wasn't unlike Buck to talk about him to others, no sir, he'd shown that time and time again. His happy-go-lucky nature made him oblivious to the fact that he was a blabberer and frequently violated people's privacy; yet that same nature made it hard to stay mad at him.

Of all the people who could know things about him, though, Vin was certainly the last person he'd get worked up over. Chris liked thinking maybe Vin was curious enough about him that he'd ask Buck questions, and that was the strangest thing of all. To want one person to know about him... he hadn't felt that way for a long time.

They worked for the rest of the day finishing everything up, until the sun had halfway set, and Chris sat down to admire his handiwork. He rolled his shoulders around, then rolled his head back and forth a few times trying to work out the painful kinks in his neck and back. Quietly, nearly without his being aware of it, Vin had come up behind him. Chris could feel his warmth, and then Vin was rubbing his shoulders and neck, pushing out the knots and kneading his sore muscles. Chris sagged forward, letting himself fall into the feeling, the heat spreading throughout his upper body. He felt sleepy, solid and yet dreamlike, and after a time he shrugged his left shoulder up and then leaned his face sideways to rest his cheek upon Vin's hand.

Vin went motionless, no breathing sounds, no more movement of hands. Chris was vaguely aware of it, had a sense of what he was doing. But it felt right to do this, to press his own skin against Vin's sun-warmed, roughened hands.

In an instant he remembered fully where they were, what was happening, and quickly jerked his head away, leaping up and dusting off his trousers. He didn't dare look at Vin, couldn't imagine what Vin was thinking of him right now.

Vin leaned down and picked up a canteen, took a swig and offered it to Chris, who took it without looking directly at him.

The moment for understanding hovered awkwardly between them; then with their inaction it passed. Its weight was too great and it dropped to the ground, broken, and there would be no chance for piecing it together again.

"Time for some grub?" Chris asked finally, and looked at Vin at last. In spite of his embarrassment, Vin wasn't looking at him funny; he was, in fact, looking as if nothing had happened.

"Sounds good to me," Vin said, trying to sound casual, to soothe Chris and let him know that everything was all right. The last thing he wanted was to have Chris disappear back inside that bad place he'd been in for so long.

When Chris went back to gather something for dinner, Vin took the bucket for more water off with him to the creek, puzzling over what had just happened. Chris was clearly ashamed of himself, but Vin wasn't so certain he was all that bothered by it. If Chris had wanted that connection, had wanted just to feel warmly toward another human being, who was he to argue with that? Vin knew that feeling well enough. And the truth was, it felt nice to touch Chris, to have him that close both physically and emotionally. It was a connection like he'd always searched for himself.

It wasn't unlike Chris to wear his heart on his sleeve, either. Vin had always been surprised when Chris would be nakedly emotional in front of people, but he just chalked it up to Chris's strong sense of who he was. The thing Vin most admired about Chris was that he cared little what other people thought of him. Sometimes that meant letting loose his bad temper, and sometimes it meant such tender feelings as he'd just shown to Vin. It was a bit exciting to Vin, never really knowing which way Chris would go, how much he'd show or how he'd react. Kept it interesting.

But this... this was different. Like the way they'd been yesterday, and how Chris had stood there behind him last night, just watching him before going back inside. As if there were things he was looking for. Vin had always known there was this part of Chris that searched for connections to people even while pushing them away, not wanting to admit to himself that he was doing either.

What Buck said to him earlier came back, that maybe there were things Chris wanted from Vin which were different from what he needed in others. It made Vin a little nervous wondering if he could be what Chris wanted in a friend, wondering if he could make the right kind of connection to Chris. He was so easy to hurt now. When you held someone's future in your hand, the responsibility was almost too heavy to carry.

He walked slowly back through the brush, where he could see the smoke rising from the stovepipe above the house. But instead of going forward, he stopped just outside, watching the place. When they'd been at Ella's and Chris had told them all he was staying with her after it was over, Vin had tried to be accepting of it. In his heart he'd known that Chris would not always be around, that at some point they'd all go their separate ways, but he hadn't expected it at that time, for that reason.

Even at the beginning he was mistrustful of Ella, although he hadn't totally understood why at the time, not until he found out the truth of who she was and what she was doing to Chris. And maybe that was what had troubled him so -- not that she was someone who couldn't be trusted, but that she was after Chris. Vin had never met anyone like her, so bold and forward, so obvious and calculated. While Vin kept his distance from most people, he wasn't cold, and it always had the capacity to surprise him when he met someone who was. He had seen through her right away. Yet he'd kept his mouth shut because it was Chris's life, and not his business. He'd said his piece, Chris had denied it, and that was all there had been to that.

By and by he walked back to the house and knocked on the door, pushing it open to see Chris standing there, looking at him helplessly.

"I'm sorry, Vin," he said with a kind of anger. Vin was amused that Chris's idea of an apology was as furious as a fight. "Didn't mean to embarrass you."

Something else was obscured behind Chris's words. Vin knew him well enough to understand that Chris wanted to say, but hadn't, that he didn't know what had come over him.

"Aw, it was nothing to be embarrassed about." He wasn't sure who he meant was embarassed -- Chris or himself. They each looked away, and then Chris gave Vin a plate of beans and a cup of coffee. Vin went outside and sat on the edge of the porch, staring at the sky and idly pushing the beans around on the plate.

When Chris eventually came out and sat beside him, they both tried to pretend that not only had they not just had that conversation, but that all the emotions building up over the past few days hadn't surfaced, either. They ate silently and nervously, and as soon as they were done, Chris was up and back in the house scrubbing up.

By now it was dark, so Vin again made himself a small fire and lay down on the ground. He stepped silently out onto the porch and looked at Vin, curled up with his back to Chris, the orange-red flickering light of the fire dancing around him.

If Vin had thought him foolish and weak before, by now he must certainly have no high opinion of Chris left. Yet Chris knew Vin had touched him first, had not flinched when Chris pressed his face against his hand. Tomorrow they would go into town and see what they could offer the boys in the way of help, but Chris wondered if any of their lives would ever be the same. If Vin decided to take leave of them, if he couldn't stomach looking at Chris again, then what would he do? If he couldn't rely on Vin's friendship and support, how would he go on again?

There were only so many losses one could endure. This life was the only thing he had left; he didn't want his pain and loneliness to steal it away from him. For a moment, watching Vin as he lay there against the red glow of the fire, he wanted to do it again, to touch Vin, just pat his shoulder or smooth a hand over his hair. Make a connection to him, something physical that could express the depth of his feelings. But there were rules in this place, too, rules he had already run a great risk of breaking, rules that frightened him too much to test.

He watched for a few minutes longer, then went inside, this time closing the door all the way. Under the skin of a dream, in the early hours, he heard a rumble of thunder and could see the sky lit up by lightning as he opened his eyes. He wondered if Vin would come in if it rained. Only he knew in his bones that Vin would stay outside, where he felt he belonged, come hell or high water.

In the morning Vin woke him with the smell of frying bacon and cooking biscuits, and coffee placed beside him on the chair next to his bed. He started when he saw Vin, surprised that he had come in without hearing it. Surprised as hell that Vin would come in at all. He must have been more tired from yesterday than he had imagined; he rarely ever slept like that when he wasn't drunk.

He took the coffee gratefully and rose to put his trousers and shirt on when Vin turned his back to him, pretending to busy himself with the cooking, although it was clear that that was already done. Over his shoulder Vin said, "We best be getting on if we want to get to town."

Chris didn't say anything, just drank his coffee while sitting on the edge of the bed. He still felt like he was supposed to apologize, like he needed to explain, but that would probably pain Vin even more.

Vin threw the thick, salty bacon and the biscuits on a plate and handed them to him, looking seriously at Chris as he did so. "I'll be outside," he said, and took his own plate outside. Chris could see him through the sliver of the door sitting on the porch, sipping his coffee and staring out into space.

When they were ready and saddled up, Vin gave Chris that exact same serious look, but this time he said, "I want you to stop apologizing and feeling bad. You didn't see me getting troubled, did you? You was finally getting back to your old self, stop feeling bad again." He reined around hard and put his horse into a trot, leaving Chris behind in his dust.

Chris stared after him, spurring his horse, shocked once again by the person Vin had shown himself to be. Every time he thought he knew who Vin was, there was a new twist to his character. It didn't stop him from feeling bad, but it gave him such a tender feeling in his heart that maybe it didn't matter.

They rode silently the rest of the way. Buck was already waiting for them on the boardwalk in front of the jail, and Vin saw Mary Travis watchfully keeping an eye on them as they arrived, standing outside the door to her office.

"Let's see your troublemaker," Chris said to Buck, and they went in to find Ezra and JD sitting inside, playing cards.

Buck opened the outside door to the cell and Chris stepped inside, looking at the man sitting on the bunk. He turned to Buck and Vin and shook his head. "Don't look familiar to me. You been looking at the wanted posters?"

From the desk, Ezra said impatiently, "Every single one we have, numerous times. After a while, all the miscreants begin to look the same." JD smirked at that and shuffled his hand around.

"Guess we'll have to wait for the judge and hope he's seen him before," Buck said.

But Vin was still staring at the man inside the jail, who, admittedly, was pretty bruised and roughed up, but did indeed seem familiar. The prisoner defiantly looked in the other direction, his disgust made all the more evident by the fact that he'd thrown his food against the wall at some point and dried bits of it hung there, stuck to the wall.

Vin stepped forward and stared at him for some time. Then he turned around and looked at Chris and Buck with surprise. "I remember him," he said harshly. "He was with Handsome Jack Averill and his guns. When I rode up, he was taking aim at Buck." Vin looked back at the man, then to Buck. "He's one of them fellows who took down Miss Hilda."


	2. Inferno

> **Lest my fury come forth like fire,  
>  and burn that none can quench it.**
> 
> _Jeremiah 4:4_

 

They all stared at Vin, but Buck spoke first. "I don't know, Vin. I'm pretty sure the fella who shot her got hit, he was one of them who went down. Her shot."

"She got a shot off, all right," Vin said. "But that don't mean she killed him. I think it was Averill's shot that got her, anyways, the way I saw it."

Buck shook his head. "I didn't see... I saw her get hit, I don't remember the rest of the details." He was angry now, at both himself and the man inside the cell.

"I saw at least four of 'em get away," Vin said quietly. By now, Ezra and JD had gotten up and come over, carefully watching the other three. "I should have taken them out myself, but that was when Chris went down."

Chris looked down at the floor, then squinted up under his brows at Vin. "You sure you remember all this correctly?"

All Vin did was look to the man in the cell, and kick the bars. "You. You know what I'm talking about, don't you?"

Their prisoner continued to ignore them, so Vin pulled out his sawn-off Winchester and cocked the lever. "Thinking to ignore me? Think again," he snapped. "I got no problem killing you now for what you done," and that finally got him an answer.

"Yeah, I was there. What of it?"

That was all the answer Buck needed. He lurched forward and grabbed the keys from JD's hand, but then both Chris and Ezra pounced on him. They held him back with great difficulty. JD joined in and they dragged Buck outside, with him hollering and trying to throw them all off in an amazing show of force.

Vin pointed a finger at the prisoner. "You shot a girl, she was wearing a nightdress. She got off one shot, and it hit you, but not enough to kill you. I saw it, I know you was the one. Show me your wound."

"No."

"You want another to match?"

The man glowered at Vin and pulled his kerchief off, then pulled his shirt and undershirt away from his shoulder. Something had grazed his shoulder recently; there was a large, red scab that looked like he'd been hit by buckshot.

"She shot you."

"You mean that big heifer? And so what if I shot her? Maybe Handsome Jack shot her. We were both busy, it could have been either one of us." Despite his face being a pulpy mess, he defiantly stuck his jaw out and glared at Vin.

That was too much to take. Vin shoved the butt of the rifle around and hit the man in the face. He reeled backwards, screaming, putting his hands up to his cheek. The door opened and Ezra ran in, looking at Vin and then back to the prisoner.

"What in heaven's name is going on in here?" Ezra barked.

"Just a little confession, is all."

Ezra gave him a dubious look. "If I had you on the other side of those jail bars, angry and whacking me about the head with a rifle, I'd probably confess to something, as well."

"He was there. He just said as much. Look at his shoulder, you can see the shot grazed him."

"All right, all right, I believe you. The trick now is keeping him alive until the judge gets here to hang him."

Vin jerked his head in the direction of the door. "What are they doing to Buck? Sitting on him?" They could hear him clear as day, snapping and growling like a rabid dog.

Sighing, Ezra said, "Well, we're going to need Nathan and Josiah as well if we intend to keep Buck away from our guest here. I think it might take the whole town to sit on him to do the job."

"You hear that?" Vin asked the man. All he got in response was a shrug, and the man returned to the bunk and looked at the wall.

"I'll stay here," Ezra said comfortingly. "You go on."

Vin nodded, but stopped before he turned all the way to go. "I know what you're saying about selling that place. I ain't trying to make you feel bad, like you felt about that money we got from Stutz. I just think it's gotta be Chris's decision, in the end." He jerked his head in the direction of the cell. "This just seals it for me. We may never be free of it, any of us, if that place stays around. Seems like we're just cursed by it, now."

"You never seemed like the superstitious type to me, Vin."

"I ain't. But I know evil when I see it, and that doesn't go away just 'cause you snap your fingers."

"No," Ezra said, shaking his head in sympathy. "No, it doesn't." He didn't know what to say to Vin. Frequently he teased Vin or mocked him. Even though he didn't mean it cruelly, somehow it always came out that way, and he thought Vin was doubtful of his character because of these incidents. But this was as close as Vin had ever come to being friendly to him, of saying what he felt. In some ways, he believed that earning Vin's respect might be even harder than earning Chris's, and it touched him just that much more that Vin was taking such pains to tell Ezra he had it. "But I do appreciate you having given it your due consideration. And who knows, perhaps you're right. Maybe it would be a positive experience for us all if we just burned the place to the ground."

Vin walked to the door, where he heard Chris and now Nathan arguing vehemently with Buck outside. He didn't think Ezra truly believed burning it was a good idea, but he appreciated the gesture.

"I will not allow it," Chris was saying, and Buck fumed at him in response. "This vigilance committee may not look like much, but what are we gonna be if we just throw out our ethics, right along with the law? We are waiting for the judge, and he'll decide who hangs and who doesn't."

As Vin stepped out onto the boardwalk, Buck said to Chris, "The men Averill hired played judge, jury, and executioner for Hilda and how many other people? Hell, they shot you, and it's lucky you're still on your feet."

"When I asked if you could do this job, when the judge hired us, you agreed to abide by the rules. I've let you get away with a lot of things, but this ain't going to be one of them."

Slapping his thigh angrily and turning around, Buck spouted a long line of epithets and half-uttered curses before turning around to face Chris. "Threat of throat trouble will at least get him to tell us why he's here. I wanna know why he suddenly turns up here after all this time, and where he's been. At the very least, he's got to know something about Ella's whereabouts."

Chris kicked at some dirt and squinted at Buck. "I don't know. It seems like a coincidence, to me. He probably didn't even know this was where we all came from. I doubt Averill told his hired guns much at all."

Nathan shook his head at that. "I don't know. I got to agree with Buck, Chris. It seems awful strange that one of the men from over in Red Fork suddenly shows up at our doorstep."

It almost made Vin laugh, except that it was so grave. Chris was pretty easy-going most times and didn't really seem to take his authority with the group very seriously, but it got his back up something fierce whenever anyone challenged his ideas. When he made a statement he wanted people to pay attention to him, and he rarely had doubts about what he was saying, so he didn't much like others doubting him.

"Well, what would you suggest, then?" Chris barked. "He didn't seem too talkative to me." He frowned at Nathan. "And anyways, what would he want with us, exactly? What's the point of coming here? He's lucky he escaped with a minor wound back at Ella's, why come back here looking for trouble?"

Stepping forward off the boardwalk, Vin said softly, "Maybe he ain't looking for trouble. Maybe he's looking for you." They all turned to look at him with surprise.

"Me?" Chris asked incredulously.

"Could be he's still on the payroll."

Chris didn't ask what payroll, he understood perfectly what Vin was saying, and he opened his mouth a couple times before anything came out. "That's just absurd."

Buck shook his head at Chris. "No, no it's not. Vin's got a point. Why else would he show up here and now?"

"This just doesn't make any sense."

Nathan disagreed. "Now, now, hold on here. She didn't stop at murdering people before to get you in her life. You think she's going to let you come back here and forget about her?"

The problem with Nathan was that he was always so reasonable; it became difficult for Chris to argue against him any time he needed to. Chris shrugged and sighed. "All right, let's see what we can find out in the meantime before the judge gets here. But you ain't going near him, you understand?" he said sternly, pointing at Buck.

Buck rolled his head around in response to that, making sure Chris knew exactly how exasperated he was, but he agreed to it. From inside the jail they could hear a commotion, and Chris drew his gun as he walked back to the door. For a second he stopped and looked at Vin -- something strangely tender in those blue eyes -- and then he moved past him quickly.

Ezra had tried to talk to the prisoner, to draw out some information from him. After a conversation about jail food and the indignities of chamber pots and the like, the man had asked for a cigarette, which Ezra had gladly made for him and lit.

"Now, refresh my memory," Ezra said in his smoothest, friendliest tones. "You were hired out by Handsome Jack to scare a woman into giving her property up. But you never knew that you'd in fact been secured by the woman in question?"

"I never knew nothing about that. Weren't but a gunfight to me."

"Hmmm... well, then, if you were wounded and escaped, what have you been doing in the intervening two months, then? Have you had contact with your former employer?"

The man glared at Ezra. "Will an answer get me out of this hole?"

"Oh, well, right now, that's an unlikely scenario. But it could work in your favor when Judge Travis comes to town. I've found him to be a reasonable man." Lying in the service of getting useful information had never been a problem for Ezra.

"Who wants to know, anyway?"

"Well, as much as I am currently in the employ of the town to keep the peace -- and I'm still not certain how exactly that transpired -- I am, within the constraints of law enforcement, an outside player, you see. I could turn out to be quite helpful to you."

With a suspicious glare the man said, "As long as you don't let that long-hair hit me again."

"So, what have you been doing since our unfortunate encounter at the Petrie spread?"

"Same's I was doing before. Working for whoever'd hire me. Mostly the railroad coming this way. I keep the johnnies in line, and that ain't hard, like keeping a bunch of mangy dogs--"

Before he could finish, Ezra had grabbed him through the cell door and banged his head repeatedly against the bars. Ezra held tight with both fists to the man's jacket, and said, his face inches away, "I will thank you not to refer to the laborers in such derogatory terms. In case you haven't figured this out yet, you're in a town with a low tolerance for disreputable behavior, and I include such slander in that category. The closest thing to a town doctor here is a colored man, and if you continue to misbehave, you'll meet him shortly. This town is largely overseen by a woman. There are three men outside who want to do you a great deal of harm. You are not helping yourself by being taciturn, nor are you ingratiating yourself with this attitude." He backhanded the man once for good effect. "You may wish to rethink such statements and actions before those very angry and very unpredictable men return."

As Ezra raised his hand once more, the prisoner yelled and tried to pull out of his grip, but only succeeded in yanking Ezra's hand painfully as he struggled. That was all Ezra could really take after that johnnie remark, and he snapped his arm against the bar. The Derringer popped out right into the man's face. He hollered once again, just as the door opened behind them and the boys strode in, Chris asking, "What in hell is going on in here?"

Ezra turned and dusted off his coat, pulling it back into position. "Why, nothing. Nothing at all. We were having a friendly little conversation." Chris looked at the Derringer and rolled his eyes.

"My kind of conversation," Vin said, smiling.

Ezra took them aside. "He's admitted as much that he worked for Handsome Jack. But he doesn't seem to want to talk about Miss Gaines."

"Probably because he's still working for her," Buck said.

Ezra looked at them quizzically. "Will any of you gentlemen fill me in?"

It seemed to amuse Nathan that Ezra was so confused, so he offered to tell him about the conversation. Chris asked them if they could handle things from there and when they said yes, Vin, Chris, and Buck -- hauled hard by Chris -- left the jail in the hands of JD, Ezra, and Nathan.

Chris wasn't convinced their prisoner was in Ella's employ, but Vin's obvious concern for him made Chris unwilling to test his friendship. He'd rarely seen such a worried look on Vin's face and wasn't quite clear on how to deal with it. He had the rankling feeling that there was something else on Vin's mind that he wasn't telling anyone. And wondering if it had something to do with Ella.

They ordered a bottle of whisky at the saloon and sat down at the checkerboard outside on the boardwalk. Buck idly shoved the pieces around. When he finally looked up, he saw Chris watching him.

"Don't you start with me, Chris."

"Not starting anything."

Buck knocked back a shot. "I'm calmer now."

"That's good," Chris said wryly. " 'Cause I thought you'd tear that man's head off if given half a chance, and use it for a ball to kick around."

"If he's the one who killed Hilda..."

"No disrespect to you or to her, but when did you become so serious about this, Buck?" Chris asked mildly.

"She was the one, Chris."

"Ah, now Buck, you say that all the time." He was trying to be good-natured about it, but Buck's overaffection for every girl he met these days was wearing him down a bit.

"No, sir, Hilda was different. Now, I like to sample as much as I can, that's true, but you know the real thing when you find it, Chris. It took me a bit to see it, but when I did, it was dead certain. She had a beauty in her, and a light that came from inside... she was something, and I'd have taken her away with me if all that hadn't happened."

"It seems to me the last time I saw you with her," Chris said, "you were running away." Vin was watching them in silence, looking back and forth at them, following the conversation. "You couldn't seem to get away fast enough."

Buck shook his head. "I know. And I'm ashamed at myself over that. But once I realized -- well, you were off upstairs with Ella, but after that party, Hilda and I stayed up until the morning hours, talking, and the time never seemed to pass so quickly. And I had never been so certain in my life of something."

"But you said that about that pretty redhead, Louisa, too."

"Ah, I know, I know. But this was real."

Something about the regret in Buck's voice and the sadness in his face made Chris realize that he was telling the truth, and Chris stopped challenging him. "I'm sorry she died, Buck. More than you might realize, and I feel like I'm partly to blame." Out of the corner of his eye he could see Vin roll his head around, probably out of disgust. "But did you ever think that maybe all these feelings, all this wanting someone to be the right one, means something? Maybe you're looking for something after all these years. Maybe Louisa and Hilda were showing you that it ain't so bad to love just one woman."

Chris thought Buck would be angry with him for such a statement, but the reaction he got wasn't expected. Buck just smiled at him. "Maybe you're right, pard. Maybe Hilda was teaching me something, the same way Sarah taught you something." Then he laughed and got up. "Think even an old dog like me can learn some new tricks?"

"Think it's about time you did. Can't keep doing the same old ones over and over." They laughed together and Buck put his hat back on, ambling off to somewhere, Chris didn't know where. He looked over at Vin, who was still sitting there quietly, his harmonica in his hand, not playing it.

"Never thought I'd hear Buck talk about a girl like that." Chris waved a hand at the empty chair.

"Me, neither." Vin moved over and sat in Buck's chair, then put the checkers pieces in their places and made the first move. Chris moved one in return. They played a few games like that, quietly passing the afternoon, not really talking at all about the things they needed to talk about -- what they would do with their prisoner, who would handle the watches at the jail and when, whether they should begin searching for Ella, and whether they even believed she would really have come back. Chris had wished he could draw out that time they'd had the past few days, and now, even though he felt he'd ruined everything, he was enjoying their silence enough to avoid the responsibility he should take by broaching those subjects.

After a time Vin stood and stretched. "Suppose I ought to be getting over to the jail. Give them fellas a break."

Chris looked at him strangely, almost with a flinch. "Of course. Wasting time here."

Glaring at him, Vin asked, "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing. Just... you're right, we're wasting time here."

"That wasn't what I meant."

"Look, Vin, I know how you feel. You don't got to make excuses for leaving."

It was rare for him to lose his temper, but Vin's face became hot with anger. He leaned forward, picking up a checkers piece and tapping it angrily against the table, until he slammed it down and said, "You think you know how I feel? You don't know nothing about how I feel. You keep thinking you did something that wasn't right, that I'm sick just to be around you. You don't know a damn thing about it. If you did, you'd know how much I admire you and how much affection I got for you. So shut up and don't tell me how I feel."

He was just about to say something else, so het up that he couldn't stop himself even though he'd said more now than he probably said in an average week, when he heard from behind him the sound of Billy Travis's and Jamey Potter's voices.

"Mr. Larabee, Mr. Tanner," they called. "Come quick. You got to come quick." Vin turned to look at them, still filled with his own fury, ready to lash into them, but they were so excited and afraid that he stopped himself. Chris stood, pulling his hat on.

"What is it?" he asked the boys. "What's wrong?"

"Come on, come on!" They grabbed Chris's and Vin's hands, pulling them off the boardwalk and down the street to the edge of town. Already Ezra and Josiah were there, as were others in the town. In the late afternoon sky, far in the distance, they could see dark smoke covering the sky like clouds of a thunderstorm, but this was no storm. At the far edge of the horizon a smear of red and orange tinted the air. It stretched as far as they could see in either direction, and even though it was miles away, there was a thrumming, dark sound that made it feel as if the earth were quivering with fear beneath their feet.

"Dear God almighty," Ezra said quietly, his voice filled with awed terror. Chris and Vin stared out at the approaching fire, dumbstruck.

Josiah turned to Ezra, then looked back at the horizon. "That ain't your dear God out there. That's your wrathful, vengeful God. Out to wipe every sinner off the earth."

 

 

In the panic that ensued, as hard as Vin tried to concentrate on all the things that needed to be done in a vain attempt to avert disaster, he couldn't quite tear his thoughts away from Chris and what this must be doing to him. Nor was he alone in this -- all the boys were worried about him, far beyond the fears a wildfire created in anyone's heart.

But there was a bigger business at hand, and Chris, as much as anyone else, had work to do. After the initial shock and fear they had all moved quickly. Everyone's help was necessary, and the town was thrown into chaos. While many ran, taking whatever they could and going towards the lake, or maybe just anywhere that wasn't here, a lot of folks stayed, determined to fight it.

Flour and grain sacks were emptied and soaked to beat back flames, as well as clothing and blankets and every available piece of cloth. What little water they could spare was thrown at buildings to wet them down. Every pickaxe, mattock, shovel, or hoe was taken out of the hardware and general stores to dig out fire breaks; saws were taken to cut down trees close to buildings or hack back shrubs; and the horses and mules were turned loose from the livery and hitching rails. Already they saw the rumbling herds of frightened cattle from the nearby ranches as they ran ahead of the fire, coming surely at its own speed and in its terrifying brilliance from the direction of Eagle Bend. Chris wondered if that town had been in its path or if the fire had started somewhere between there and here, after that lightning storm of the night before. Or maybe it had started carelessly, a cigarette or a match, a campfire left unattended. Whatever its cause, the thunder of destruction was already on its way. They had time, but not much, and if the wind gusted or the swirling heat and wind the fire created on its own shifted in the slightest way, they could be in for serious trouble.

Josiah was hard at work digging a firebreak at the edge of town when he looked back and nodded his head at JD, who was helping him. "There's a sight you won't see often in your life," he noted. JD looked over to the feed store boardwalk to see two frantic steers trying to fight their way out of the building, confused, terrified. When the two men turned back to their job, they saw riders coming, dozens of people who had been outrunning the fire.

"What if we can't stop it, Josiah? What if we can't turn it back or outrun it?" JD asked, in between gulping breaths.

"Then we perish," was all Josiah would say. Under his breath he began muttering something, and JD asked him what he was saying. "A prayer. Pray for our salvation, because we're running out of time, son." The ground was shaking, JD could feel it trembling with the fire's approach.

He could only look at Josiah in horror, realizing that if Josiah's own faith was shaken, if he was frightened enough to pray, they were in serious trouble. Josiah always saved that for private; he kept his dealings with the Lord mostly to himself. Even though it still paced itself and was a few miles away, the sound was deafening, smoke roiling in clouds as large as a building, illuminated by red from underneath.

"Will they stop here and help us?" JD asked of the people running.

"Don't know, JD. But we can't count on it. People do funny things when they're afraid."

"Don't I know it!" They kept digging, kept working, even as night was beginning to sneak up on them. The brilliance of the fire as it came closer, the noise of it, was both awe-inspiring and fearsome. Now he could hear the snapping of trees as the fire jumped from canopy to canopy, looking for more food.

Vin and dozens of others were cutting back brush and trees from the edge of town and building backfires they hoped would stop the progress, leaving less material for the fire to jump along. He could see Mary Travis and Mrs. Potter desperately throwing water against the farthest outlying buildings, helping to clear back brush, but he thought it would be futile. Already homesteaders outside the town might be either burned out and on the run, or dead, trying to defend their homes. Maybe he was just being cynical, enough people survived prairie fires, but out here with the woods, things were different. The chaparral and sage, the trees and grasses around here were all so dry despite last night's light summer rain that they would go up like tinder. He and Nathan and the others sawed down every shrub they could get to, but the fire was fast approaching. They set fire to what they could cut in small, controlled blazes. Looking up into the sky, he willed the clouds to open up with rain, but nothing was there to answer him. If he'd ever known a time he wanted to run away, it was right now. With a sudden ferocity, he wished that he had never stayed here, had never been fool enough to put down roots.

Chris had to open the jail, and told Buck and Ezra to keep an eye on their prisoner, but in the chaos and fear they'd long since lost track of him. There were so many people running around, half trying to find ways to keep back the fire, the other half running as fast as they could, that one man was impossible to watch for. Even Ezra was dirtying his hands, digging firebreaks and carrying water, right behind Buck. If the wind could just be in their favor, if it could turn the fire back the other way or send it to the west, maybe they could take its glancing blow and survive with only minimal damage.

Now it was close enough to feel the heat, a huge, hungry animal that filled Chris's vision and stung his eyes with its fumes and ash. Cones from pines exploded here and there; trees crackled; flames curled up like red fingers reaching for the sky. As it came closer, they could feel its enormous heat on their skin. Chris stopped his work and stared at the fire, his heart stopping in his chest. There was nothing he hated more in this life, nothing that could paralyze him with terror like fire. It wouldn't do any good, all this effort. They would have to run to the small lake outside town or the creek nearby, or hide in the dugouts. Even then, could they escape it totally? Fire sucked the air from around you, smothered you even if you weren't burnt to a crisp by the flames themselves. The smoke choked you to death. He could feel the whoosh of air as it was eaten by the blazing mouth in the sky, and there was only roaring in his ears as it thundered toward them.

Suddenly Vin was next to him. "We gotta get out of here, now. We have to move these folks out, this ain't gonna stop it. The backburns won't get the worst of it. You can see it moving through the tree tops, faster up there. It's throwing off embers, and if they catch..."

After a second or two, Vin's words penetrated Chris's mind, and he turned to Vin, confused for a moment. "The wind's blowing to the north," he said stupidly, feeling it ripple his hair, along with the cruel heat. He wasn't sure if it was the normal wind that moved the fire forward, or the wind generated by the fire itself.

"Maybe, but it's too late to help us."

They ran for the other men with Josiah and JD to tell them to go, but just then Josiah straightened up. "Maybe God's listening to us. The wind's shifting." The closest wall of fire was curved away from them, dancing its edge toward the town but not moving, taunting them with its hint of disaster ever closer.

"Not fast enough," Vin shouted as they came up to them. "Come on, we're leaving, get everyone and let's go." He tried to grab at JD's arm, but JD stood fast.

"We can't just leave everyone!" Around them backfires smoldered in ashes, waiting to absorb the flames.

Chris shouted back at him over the roar of the fire, "We're not! Everyone's coming with us! We're going to the creek." They began running toward Buck and Ezra to get them and the others. People had thrown down their tools and were now rushing away, covering their faces, to the other end of town. Heading in the other direction from hell.

As they reached Ezra a sudden gust of wind blew flames from a nearby tree that exploded in a ball of flame, then subsided. It hit Vin with its large sparks, which caught in his hair and the kerchief he wore over his face. Ezra immediately threw his coat over Vin and smothered the fire, just as one of the outlying buildings was caught in the updraft of the flames. The water had dampened the row of buildings so that they didn't go up like a torch, but it was not enough -- the flames still swallowed them quickly. Vin was shaking as Ezra took his coat away, his face filled with terror, and Ezra realized that it was the first time he had seen Vin afraid, ever. Even though there was no time for it he put a hand on Vin's shoulder and nodded at him. "You'll have to visit the barber at long last, Vin," Ezra said loudly but kindly, touching the large chunk of Vin's long brown waves that had singed.

"Thanks, Ezra," Vin said as humbly as someone could while shouting. They dodged away from the smoke pouring thickly at them. "Now you've gone and ruined your pretty jacket."

"Oh, anything in the service of a good deed," Ezra replied. "Besides, we're probably going to die anyway, crisped like bacon." He laughed bitterly.

When Vin turned he saw Chris looking at him in agony, his face a twisted mask of pain. In that eyeblink of a moment Vin realized just how much affection Chris had for him, how afraid he was of losing Vin in his life, and Vin nodded at him, still shaking, but knowing that anything was bearable as long as Chris cared for him. Chris gave him a wan smile, and they were on the move again.

The backburns were working, though. The fire stalled in places, with nothing to keep it going. Only the southern part of the fire had something to eat at as it blazed its path toward the rest of the town.

Even as the wind shifted, the fire began to eat away at the town and its surroundings. But slowly, almost imperceptibly, the remaining portion began moving northward, as if one side of the town were being punished and the other side rewarded. The boys all stopped, watching it move in the other direction, hoping it would stay on its new path. Chris wiped sweat from his head, staring helplessly at the fire, knowing that even if some of their own town was left standing, some others would lose their homes and lives before it stopped. Even before fire had destroyed his own life he'd seen forest fires sweep across the great thickets of trees that had surrounded the land he grew up in, wasting whole communities within moments.

JD said from behind him, "Looks like your prayers worked, Josiah."

Shaking his head, Josiah replied, "Oh, God don't listen to a sinner like me. Maybe he just feels like he's done tormenting us for now."

Chris looked contemptuously at JD. "God don't give a damn."

Vin touched Chris's arm. "We got to stop the spread of the rest of this." He nodded in the direction of the outlying buildings where those who hadn't run were desperately beating out flames with wet sacking, trying to keep it at bay before all the remaining structures burned out.

He didn't know what was wrong with him that in an emergency he was being so dull-witted as this, and that Vin had to keep reminding him how to act. But he was grateful for it, and he followed with the rest of them over to help. At least this he could do, at least now he could try to put the flames out instead of helplessly standing in the middle of the burned-out remains of his life. He could try, now, to save someone else's future.

 

Hours later, in the smoky darkness of night, they could still see the fire against the horizon as it swept northeast from the town. A crimson moon hung above the town like a bloody eye, dispassionately watching their destruction. Exhausted, filthy, hungry, and frightened, people of the town clustered together and tried to comfort one another, watching the buildings that had once stood on the east end of town smolder their embers out. The stench of wet, burned wood was everywhere. Farther out would be the odor of burnt animal carcasses, which would reach them soon enough. They would have to get looking for their horses soon.

As he sat on the boardwalk that just a few feet from him crumbled into soot, Chris stared at his feet and tried to calm himself. A few minutes into his silence a man's boots appeared in his view, and he looked up to see a stranger watching him.

"Mr. Larabee? Chris Larabee? I thought you looked familiar." Chris just stared back at him, unable to understand what he was saying. "I'm Ady Janson, my wife Annie and me had the parcel of land just a bit south of you. Maybe you don't recall. We saw you at church sometimes, you and your wife. We were so sorry to hear about what happened to your family, it was terrible, just terrible." He looked around. "Funny that it was a fire drove us here now. Sad."

Chris could only nod; he still hadn't found his speech.

"I won't keep you, I just wanted to tell you how sorry I was about everything, and how sorry I am that you've had to see such a thing again. Hope no one close was hurt this time."

He stood and thanked the man, finally remembering him from all that time ago, but just barely. Now they had clearly lost everything too, if they were here. "Eagle Bend?"

"If there's anything left, it won't be much. There was some terrible lightning last night, can't help thinking maybe that's what started it. But it swept right through and we had to run. Didn't have time to fight, even."

He hung his head and Chris touched his shoulder. "I'm sorry."

"We'll be all right. Some of us are going back to see... see if there's anything to rebuild."

"I hope so."

He watched Janson walk away into the darkness, knowing how hard it would be for them if nothing was left. They were not much more than dirt farmers, and the horses they had come in on would be about all they'd have left. Anyone between here and Eagle Bend would be the same, as would most of this town's residents. Where would they get money? Chris was filled with despair at this life, the harshness of existing out here, the fact that life offered you so little in return for so much work and struggle and sacrifice. Josiah may believe that God was involved in this, but Chris had no doubts anymore, he knew they were living in a Godless world, one where innocent people burned alive. Before he'd hated God; now he believed there was no holy power, not in a world like this. They were utterly, completely alone.

He went looking for Vin, thinking of all the things Vin said to him that afternoon in a world away. It wasn't good to spend all his time pondering how strange things had become between them lately, but he sure could have come up with better ways to keep his mind occupied than a wildfire. He saw Vin with Josiah helping some people into the church. Josiah had opened the church up to everyone he could take in, small as it was. Vin's kindness to people touched Chris, especially at a time when all Chris could feel was that he wanted to run away. It was always Vin's nature to help people, whether it was tending a wound with Nathan or standing up against an injustice.

And when Vin was momentarily in danger all Chris was able to do was stand there stupidly while Ezra took action. The thought of fire even touching Vin made him shudder, his stomach twisting at the notion. Part of Vin's hat had burned away, a section of his long hair, but at least that had been the only damage. Ezra had stopped it before it had hurt him. It was too much for Chris to think about the other things that could have happened, how close Vin had come, how close they'd all come. He was beginning to believe that fire followed him, that somehow he was cursed by it, as if it was his very own hell, trailing behind him on a leash. A punishment for the life he'd led before.

If Chris told that to anyone, he knew how stupid it would sound. Buck would give him that big shake of the head and a dramatic punch on the arm, then tell him he was feeling too guilty again. And Josiah would come up with something wise but that would do nothing to ease these feelings. So he had best keep it to himself. He watched Vin instead as he helped someone up the steps of the church, obscured by the smoke that still blew everywhere in puffy drifts, and thought that after all this time he was finally beginning to understand the other things he'd lost when Sarah and Adam had died -- trust, understanding, loyalty. Love contained all these things and more, but it was too easy forget that. These were the things Vin was trying to communicate to him yesterday. Why did it take loss or the threat of loss to understand that?

Just as he went looking for his horse he saw JD with Tiny, the two of them leading a whole passel of animals back to the livery and any available hitching rail. All the boys' horses were there and Chris smiled. Good animals, he thought, maybe even smarter than they themselves were.

Spying Mary across the way, he went over to put comforting arms around her and she buried her face in his soot-covered shoulder. "It's all right," he said, with no conviction whatsoever.

She looked up at him with teary eyes, the smudges of dirt and ash fouling her perfect skin and hair. "We came so close. What if we hadn't been so lucky?"

"But we were," he said. "Is Billy all right?"

Looking down at her hands, she nodded, then looked at him again. "What if the fire hadn't shifted? Or the backfires didn't work?"

"We would have run, just like we were starting to do. To the fishing hole at the lake, a stream, somewhere. I've seen people survive these, easier than grasshoppers or floods."

Mary shook her head. "It wouldn't have helped. It was too late. We stayed too long, trying to stop it."

"But we're here."

She put her hand on his chest, her gentle touch a surprise to him. "This must have been so awful for you. I can't imagine."

All he could do was nod and look off into the distance.

"And Vin? Is he all right?"

"Aw, he'll be okay, just a bit lopsided for a while, 'less he cuts all his hair off. Good thing he's not vain."

Mary laughed, a sweet sound. It had been a long time since he'd seen such an expression on her face when he was within talking distance. They'd had so much go between them after Ella, all of it bad, and even though they both knew things could never be the same, it felt wonderful after all this time -- and the horrible night -- to laugh together.

"What would we have done without all of you?"

"Survive, just like always."

"There's a difference between surviving and living. Because of all of you, we have lives here. You're willing to risk so much for us."

Even though he'd been willing to give it all up for Ella at the crook of her finger. But he didn't say that. "And you? Will you rebuild? I have a feeling a lot of people who lost much won't want to stay."

"I've been through worse; I have to stay. Orrin will be here and plans to stay for a bit. I feel like it's as much his town as anyone's, despite what I know you all think about me." She gave him a wry smile and he squeezed her arm in return.

"I have a plan," Chris said quietly. "Will you tell people to just sit tight? It might take me a while. And at least a couple of us are going to have to chase off after that prisoner. He didn't waste no time getting out of here, but I'm not letting him go."

Her response was a curious look from under her brows. She pushed her hair off her forehead. "Well, if you have a plan, it must be interesting. Of course I'll tell people. Just let me know when you're ready."

Chris walked away from her, trying not to listen to the sounds of people crying, and continued his walk through town, checking on as many people as he could. The light was coming up now, and even with morning alive around him everything still felt dead. He was numb inside from the fear. He didn't want to go into the church, but he wanted to find Vin. As he got nearer to the church, though, he saw Vin knocking some still-smoldering wood to the ground with his foot.

"Would have thought you'd had enough of that," Chris said dryly.

Vin turned quickly and his face split in a huge grin. "Where you been, cowboy? Thought maybe you'd run off on us."

"Just checking on people." Chris helped Vin smother out the remaining embers of what had once been the Bender's pharmacy. Then he tossed Vin a can of peaches, which he caught in mid-air.

Soberly, Vin said, "You gonna be okay? Only, you don't look it."

"You ain't exactly a picture yourself, you know."

"Aw, that ain't what I mean, and you know it. Just worried about all this. Can't be easy for you."

"Nah, it ain't." He motioned for Vin to follow him and they wandered over to the back of the church where it was quiet for now, nothing but the sound of the wind and the sharp tang of burned wood and sagebrush. They sat on the steps and Chris looked out at the horizon that was slowly turning blue, as if everything were normal and it was just another day. Vin sawed open the can with zeal, spearing a peach on his knife and bringing it to his mouth, juice dripping everywhere. Chris opened his own and did the same, saying, "Courtesy of Mrs. Potter. Reckon she thinks we saved the whole town just ourselves."

"Well, this is a treat worth a little extra work for," Vin said happily, devouring the rest of the peaches and drinking the juice from the can.

Laughing while he ate the rest of his, Chris managed to get out, "If that's what you think of as extra work, you and me got some serious disagreements ahead of us."

After a time he turned to Vin, looked at him hard. "You scared me half to death." There, he'd said something of how he felt. After all the strange things that had happened in the past few days, this might be dangerous, but he didn't want to waste any more time.

"Just a little singed hair is all. Ezra called it cosmetic damage." He squinted off in the distance. "But I think I scared myself more. Never felt like that."

"Not you. You never been afraid of anything in your life."

"More than you know, Chris, a lot more than you know."

Chris reached over to the other side of Vin's face and pushed a lock of hair behind his ear, tenderly. "Don't be doing that to me again."

For a moment Vin closed his eyes, then looked at Chris with startling intensity. "Never."

Everything was different now, the whole world had changed outside of them -- and inside. Chris looked away, and Vin wondered if he too understood that everything was different, and if he was afraid now of just what that meant.

"Been thinking. I got a few things I want to do, but soon as they're done, we need to go after that fellow from the jail."

"Did anyone see which way he went?" Vin asked.

"Nope, but I imagine he went west or northwest, where the water is. I'll need you, and I was thinking of Josiah. After something like this, there's a lot of bad trouble on the trail. Every terrible piece of news you can find will come out of the woods. We'll need more than just us two, but we can't afford all the boys."

"All them people in the church might need him. Don't want to take Buck, huh?"

"Too close. Can't take Nathan, and JD will want to be around to comfort Casey, even if he don't know it yet." They both chuckled at that. "Nah, I think we need someone of Josiah's size, and besides, Ezra can stay around. He's had practice preaching," Chris said with a smirk. "Kids love him, and I got a plan for him to take care of, anyway."

"Fill me in?"

"I know what I want to do with Stutz's money. I'll tell you when we're on the trail."

Vin stood and brushed off his clothes. "Best see if I can get me a new hat before we head out. And I'll go tell Josiah." Chris stood up next to him. "He's going to be a might disappointed that he won't get to do some hellfire and brimstone preaching after this. Take all his fun away."

"He does like to scare people." Chris gave him a little wave as he walked away, and Vin watched him go around the corner. He was putting up a brave front, Vin thought, but the cracks were showing. Four Corners and all the land around it looked like it had been in the middle of a battle, and all this would only make Chris feel as if he'd survived one too many. Of course they had a job to do, and Chris was serious about this, but he also believed that getting out of here was the only thing Chris could do to save his sanity. At least Vin could go with him, be by his side. Where he belonged.

This strange feeling between him and Chris was like a mirage. The Indians he'd lived with had a different word for it, but Josiah had taught him that one and he liked the sound of it. Something on the land that glimmered faintly, and if you approached it, might disappear. He'd known men who were closer than most in their affections, but was this feeling between Chris and him just a figment of his mind? Something shimmering on the horizon that couldn't be reached because it vanished before you touched it? Was the way Chris seemed to feel real? Maybe he'd never know. But he could live an interesting life finding out.

He went to Josiah to tell him Chris's plans and Josiah accepted it philosophically, although he was a bit surprised that Chris had plans for Stutz's money. "Chris's mind works in mysterious ways," Josiah said.

"Ain't that the truth."

"He holding up after all this? Can't imagine this is easy for him after all he's been through." Josiah was pulling things together for a lengthy ride, not knowing how long they'd be away.

"I think he's been better."

"And you?" Vin was a bit surprised by this question, uncertain exactly what Josiah was asking. "You've been carrying around all those things from Ella's place and worrying over that. What now?"

"Oh, that. Well, I ain't talked about what to do with the house yet. And now don't seem like the time to bring up burning a place down."

Josiah laughed. "No, it certainly doesn't. It's almost too bad that the Lord has such a peculiar sense of humor. If he'd been more serious, he would have started that fire round about Red Fork rather than Eagle Bend."

"I went there." Vin kicked at the door jamb, staring at his boot toes.

"To Red Fork?"

Nodding, Vin said, "I ain't scared of much, but I swear that place was haunted. It felt like something was there and my horse was all spooked. Could have been a bear or a mountain lion, but I don't think so. My skin was crawling."

"The lost souls destroyed by Ella Gaines?"

"I know, I know, it sounds foolish. Believe me, I ain't wanted to say anything to anyone, but I can't shake the feeling. And there's this part of me... I keep thinking that with that feller showing up, and now this fire, something strange is going on. That Chris is in danger."

"You really believe that man is here because of Ella?"

Vin looked away at the street, not totally certain what to say without making more of a fool of himself. "I keep thinking everything is because of her."

"Even this wildfire?"

He shook his head. "Aw, I don't know. Suppose not, it's just my nerves talking. Next thing you know I'll be telling you I saw Miss Hildegard's ghost."

"You're more aware of what Chris feels than anyone else in this town. I'm not surprised you'd feel fearful of his safety. If he's a smart man, he'll pay attention to you this time."

"Or maybe not." Vin motioned for Josiah to follow him and they went to their horses. "Maybe I'm just a fool, and y'all are too nice to tell me." He smiled at Josiah. "And now I gotta get me a new hat."

 

"Allow me to ascertain whether I understand this correctly," Ezra said, confounded. "You are asking me, the single least-trustworthy person in this little mercenary group of ours, the one who only a few short months ago asked you not to entrust him with others' cash, to take ten thousand dollars and play Robin Hood with it?"

"Not all of it. Take one thousand out and distribute it between the six of you."

"Cut seven ways, that doesn't precisely make us rich as Croesus."

"You saying you don't want it?" Chris glared at him, and Ezra quickly made placating noises. When Chris got this irascible this quickly, he'd lost all his ground.

"Now, now, that is most emphatically not what I'm saying. I would be most grateful to have any of the money, of course, and I would be thrilled to spread the wealth to the residents of this town."

"Not the residents, only the people who've been burned out or lost someone. That means you have to keep a tight lip on what you're doing, and you're going to need JD and Buck and Nathan and Mary to help you. Subtlety ain't always your strong suit where money's concerned, but you got to be subtle this time."

"Have no fear, inconspicuous is my middle name."

Laughing derisively, Chris said, "And people from Eagle Bend or anywhere else that got hit by that fire."

"Understood." He was completely mystified by Chris's sudden desire to entrust him with such an undertaking, but it certainly made up for what had happened the past few months. He wasn't sure what prompted such a change of heart in Chris, but things definitely were different about him in more ways than Ezra could possibly enumerate.

As he walked back to the church to see about taking over from Josiah, Ezra heard a sharp voice call out to Chris from behind him, and immediately thought, *trouble*. Mr. Conklin had never done anything but gripe about them, had never been willing to concede their value to the town. Ezra stopped and turned back to Chris, knowing that this would be one of the few times Chris would need his moral support.

"And you can't expect to just leave us at a time like this," Conklin was barking at Chris.

"Mr. Conklin, I got nothing to say to you about this. We had a prisoner, we're going after him. Four of us are staying behind."

"That's not enough! People have lost their livelihoods, their homes. Others have probably lost lives. There's too much work to do."

Chris stopped tying down his gear and turned angrily to Conklin. "And you'll get help from four of us. We'll find our prisoner and bring him back shortly. But I'm not letting a murderer get away scot-free because of a fire."

"There are more important things than that." By now Mary Travis had come up near Mr. Conklin, and others were watching the discussion.

"I don't know what's more important than making a man pay for killing a fine young woman and beating up another. Or taking a shot at JD Dunne when all he's done is try to protect this town," Chris snarled.

Ezra stood beside Chris and watched as Vin rode up with Josiah on his tail. "Mr. Conklin, I promise you that any assistance needed by anyone in this town will be rendered adequately, even without the rest of our committee. Unless you wish to effectively drive us all away because of your ingratitude and poor choice of timing," Ezra said in his most unctuous and charming voice. Mary smiled behind Conklin, and he knew that she was readying to shut him up if his own speech didn't effectively do the job.

Conklin looked at Chris and then back to Vin and Josiah, and finally gave up. He grumbled away, making a show of it for everyone assembled, until Chris mounted his horse. Mary nodded at him and Chris touched his hat in return, then he nodded at Ezra. "Remember what I told you. Especially when it comes to him," he said, gesturing in Conklin's direction.

"Certainly. You can depend on me." He flashed a gold-toothed smile, tipped his hat, and said, "Safe journey."

"Take care of yourself, Ezra," Vin said and tipped his hat. Ezra watched them ride away, thinking *watch your backs*, realizing that he and the other four had the easier job of soothing people's hearts and helping them rebuild. Tracking someone in all this destruction and wondering whether the fire could come right back at you would be hard enough, and none of them had had any sleep. All in all, he'd rather be here playing with money.

 

It wasn't quite as bad as Vin had feared. The fire had played itself out closer to Four Corners, so finding a trail wasn't such a challenge. Keeping track of their quarry would be easy enough -- it was mostly just making sure they had the right quarry. Enough people had run in this direction that he had to sort out the tracks and signs he wanted from others which might have been created by people running away -- no one they need concern themselves with.

At one point Vin broke the silence by asking Chris what his plan was for the money, and Chris told him that he'd given Ezra charge of the cash to give to people who'd suffered in the fire. Vin started to laugh his quiet, low chuckle, and Chris pulled his head back, squinting at him. "What's so damn funny?"

Shaking his head, Vin answered, "Aw, nothing, don't get all worked up." Then he really started to laugh, his shoulders shaking, no sound coming from his mouth.

"Looks like it's pretty funny to me."

"It's just --" Vin turned around to see how Josiah was reacting, but a person would never know if he was listening or not, he seemed almost to be sleeping under the brim of his hat. "Josiah and Ezra were saying the other day that you and me are two of a kind. That we got a need to help people."

Chris looked sternly at him and made a humphing sound.

"Ezra said I got a soft spot for someone with a broken wing, and I think he said that you need to have a cause. Like I guess we're at our best when people are hurting and need help." He fixed Chris with a sharp look. "And it's lookin' like maybe they're right."

It was irritating to think of them all talking about his private life, and about him and Vin like that. As if they had a right to discuss his character. But he knew as well as anyone that they considered themselves friends now, and friends would want to talk about what made you who you are. Even if they shouldn't. It was one reason he'd avoided having too many friends in his lifetime -- this tendency for people to second-guess you. But this was a marker for him. Enough people here had found him worth the challenge of getting past his walls, most of all Vin, and that was certainly a change in his life. A pretty dramatic one, too. And anyhow, he couldn't begrudge them talking about him when all he'd ever given them was one thin sliver of his life like they were supposed to do something with it, like it was supposed to mean something. Only Vin had ever really figured out what to do with it.

Long before dusk they were exhausted, and Chris, acknowledging that they were, had them set up camp and eat something. He asked Josiah if he could take first watch, although it was a toss-up which one of the three of them was more tired. Josiah thought he could, he said, but it would have to be a short one.

Josiah kept on his feet, mostly to stay awake, and walked around along the edge of the treeline of the little clearing they'd camped in. Vin couldn't see him, but he knew Josiah would stay alert; he had never really forgiven himself for letting the Chinese boy steal his gun while he was sleeping, so he'd want to prove to himself that he was dependable.

Despite his exhaustion, Vin couldn't sleep. He looked up at the wide net of stars in the sky, thinking how different everything looked just twenty-four hours later. There was no veil of ash over everything, no drifts of smoke to obscure the night. He still reeked of smoke and dirt and it would be a long few days before he'd get a bath and a shave and a change of clothes.

Then he heard a soft rustling sound, barely audible, and suddenly Chris was at his side, leaning down toward him and sliding under the blanket. Vin was too shocked to say anything, but Chris put his hand on Vin's mouth, motioning silence with his fingers. Vin looked around in suspicion, wondering where Josiah was. He didn't see any sign of him.

It felt funny, how warm against him Chris was, the way Vin's own heart seemed to still inside his chest. Chris pressed the whole of his body along Vin's, then took his hand away from Vin's mouth. He had a wild look in his eye, excited and fearful, which was arousing to Vin for reasons he couldn't understand but recognized. It was as if Chris was a mirror of what Vin himself was feeling, both of them nervous about and fascinated by what was going on between them.

Then Chris pressed his mouth against Vin's, carefully at first, then harder and still harder, and Vin felt himself fall open to Chris. He gripped Chris's shoulders with his fingers, and Chris slid his hand along Vin's torso, down to his hip, poised closely near his groin.

He was kissing Chris. Or Chris was kissing him, he wasn't sure at first. Then he realized they were really kissing each other. It was a tough thing to understand completely, but he was thrilled by it, alive with it coursing through his bones and blood and muscle. He tasted of smoke and coffee, whisky and tobacco, and it was a perfect mix; perfectly Chris. His breathing came shallower and faster, and Chris pulled away, staring hard at Vin.

Vin's eyes were wide, so dark in the night like this. Chris wondered if he looked like that himself, if they both appeared to each other equally terrified. Over and over he plunged his mouth against Vin's, gulping in his taste.

Again Chris put his fingertips over Vin's mouth as he moved his other hand to Vin's pants and caressed his cock. Vin nodded and lay back, pulling Chris on top of him. Chris was giddy with the notion of what he was doing and terrified of this falling, falling feeling as he did it. Unbuttoning Vin's pants, he pressed his open mouth to Vin's, tongues circling each other, teeth lightly pulling at lips.

An amber fire, soft and warm, filled his veins, his chest, his mouth. Even while expecting that Vin might push him away, he had let his needs overtake him. And that initial moment of fear was overtaken quickly by desire, and then such a sweet excess of feeling he almost didn't recognize it in himself. As if a stranger had stepped into his skin to experience all these sensations, this enjoyment, this passion.

Chris pushed his face into Vin's neck, trying to muffle his groans, choking back every noise he desperately wanted to make. He bit into Vin's collarbone, could feel Vin doing the same to him on his shoulder as they pushed against each other.

Every movement was maddeningly wonderful, yet Vin couldn't make a sound, couldn't make a motion that would result in noise. He kept looking over Chris's shoulder even as he pressed his mouth against it, trying to see if Josiah would come into view, and then suddenly he forgot where he was, what he was doing as the feeling of Chris's hot hand stole away his senses. Chris wrapped his hand around Vin's throbbing cock, stroking it, until Vin had undone Chris's pants and slid them low on those thin hips, their flesh meeting in a shivery, searing friction. Vin's whole body was wracked with trembling pleasure as Chris moved against him, one hand sliding up under his shirt, the other pressed to Vin's cheek or neck, back and forth.

Vin dug his hands firmly into Chris's backside, shoving Chris hard against him with each short, furious movement. And Chris was still kissing him, wet, open-mouthed kisses, alternating with soft bites and teasing licks. Tiny pinwheels of pleasure whirled through him, bursting behind his eyelids in white sparks. Within moments Vin felt Chris buck hard against him once, twice, and then he stopped, although his kisses did not. Vin could feel the wet warmth over his belly, and then Chris began rocking against him again, his hand wrapped around both their cocks, making sure that Vin would have no less pleasure. Chris suddenly licked around Vin's ear, then sucked on his earlobe and Vin could feel the shuddering release of his own body take him in surprise. He pressed his mouth against Chris's shoulder, muffling the deep groan he wanted so badly to make. He'd had no idea someone's tongue on his ear could send him over the edge quite that way and now he wanted to laugh for the foolishness of it. But he could not, so he bit the cloth of Chris's shirt until the urge went away. Chris pulled his kerchief off and stroked it over them both, wiping the sticky mess away before he leaned down to kiss Vin longingly and deeply.

Then he slid away into the cloaking darkness, leaving Vin panting shallowly, stunned. Vin lay back against the cold ground and pulled the blanket up over his shoulder, wondering what had just happened, certain it wasn't a dream or nightmare but not so certain it wasn't madness. In spite of everything, how could he have expected this? He had to sleep; Josiah would likely come to wake him soon. It would be best to think about this tomorrow. As if he could think of anything else. He closed his eyes, willing himself to sleep.

 

He dreams. At first, just darkness and the sensation of falling. Then Vin is in a town, possibly it's Four Corners but he doesn't quite recognize it, although he sees parts of Red Fork and maybe even Eagle Bend. They look wrong together like this, but that's not what's so disquieting. There is a dance going on to the left; on the boardwalk fiddlers are playing and people are dancing, even though much of the town is smoldering from dying flames and embers, and spot fires still dot the landscape.

In the press of bodies he can see the boys scattered all around, some of them clapping their hands in time to the music. At the far end is Chris, laughing and smiling. Someone is next to him; Vin realizes it's Sarah and Adam, and Chris leans down to pick Adam up, hoisting him onto his hip and holding the boy close. He has never seen Sarah, so he doesn't know how he knows it's her, but she looks like the woman from the picture, even though much of her face was scratched away on the print he saw.

Then something catches his eye on the right. A brilliant white flash, someone moving through the crowds of brown and dun and grey and black. A dress, he thinks, a woman in a blindingly white dress. He can't see her face, can only see the rustle of a petticoat at the bottom, then a curve of bodice or bustle, and the dress is so white that it can't be real, no one could keep a piece of cloth so clean out here, he thinks.

Try as he might, his eye won't stop following the woman as she moves through the assembly of people clapping and singing. So he walks forward, keeping after her as she weaves among the crowd. A feeling of unease grows in him. Then he sees her arm, snaking out toward him, almost glowing with the reflection of the setting sun. She drops a pure white lawn handkerchief and it flutters to the ground slowly, dropping like words that float from love-tender lips. Vin's eyes move up from the handkerchief to the arm, then to her face, which he sees now. Ella Gaines. Her dark hair is done up tight against her head and a white hat is fitted against the round curve of her hair, a white mother-of-pearl comb at the nape of her neck. She turns and looks at him, and he moves slowly forward, like stepping through molasses. She dips her head and turns away, an elegant, swanlike motion that seems so demure and modest. Now he sees she has a parasol, white of course, with ruffles along the edges, held in her white-gloved hands.

Where is Chris? He looks into the crowd and can't see him at first, then finds him, but Sarah and Adam are no longer there, although Chris seems happy anyway, clapping hands in time, smiling broadly. With sudden clarity Vin realizes that Chris is in danger, and Ella is moving toward him. Vin doesn't understand how he knows her intent, but she is going to harm him. He tries to catch the attention of the other boys, calling their names, but they don't hear him. He nearly screams in Ezra's face, gesturing wildly at Ella, but Ezra doesn't understand him and looks away, grinning. Vin fights his way through the crowd, but more and more people get in his way, and he doesn't know where they are all coming from. Panic consumes him. Ella turns to him and smiles, a wicked smile of triumph, he thinks. She's won, she will get to Chris before him. Everyone parts for her. He sees the handkerchief on the ground, but now its whiteness is ruined by blood, small rosettes of it which form a pattern on the surface.

He screams at Chris, trying to warn him. Then she's there, and Chris is looking at her, taking her arm in his. Vin lunges for Chris, hollering at his loudest not to touch her, but Chris ignores him. Ella turns and as Vin reaches for them, his hand is engulfed in flame. It spreads up his arm, faster than an eyeblink. As the pain shoots through his body he tries to get help, but none of the boys sees him. The fire spreads around him and then Ella reaches for him. Even while he is burning he feels her hand around his neck, as cold as death.

 

When he opened his eyes again, trembling from a nightmare and his mind still sleep-damp, Josiah was shaking him awake, his hand on Vin's neck. Quietly he gave Vin some hot coffee and Vin smiled at him, thinking how it was exactly what he needed and so like Josiah to assume that. Vin couldn't help wondering if Josiah had seen anything before; but if he had, he would never really show it. He let Josiah sleep, wandering around aimlessly, passing in and out of the trees, trying not to stand near Chris's sleeping figure and stare at him as if somehow he could figure out what in hell had happened earlier and what they would do about it in the days to come. He found himself a downed tree to sit on, chewing on some jerky and keeping his mind on other things -- the fire, finding their prisoner, what they would do when they got back. But each thought led Vin back to Chris atop him, Chris touching him and kissing him, and how eagerly he had responded.

When it was time to wake Chris for the last watch, Vin knelt above him and touched his shoulder lightly. Chris could be a very heavy sleeper, he'd learned, and tended to be easily startled at times, so Vin just rested his hand on him softly for a while until Chris became aware of him and opened his eyes. For a moment they looked at each other in silence, calm and trusting, until Chris sat up and brushed himself off. He picked up Vin's rifle, as he always did when he had a watch, and nodded at Vin as if nothing were different. Vin lay back down and pulled the blanket over him, aware only of Chris's dark shape at the treeline and the silence of the night.

Chris watched him settle in, knowing that Vin was looking at him even though he couldn't see his eyes. He leaned with his back against a tree, cradling the rifle in his arms, breathing deeply. Out here there was no smell of smoke or burned wood except that of their small campfire, no path of destruction. You would never know that only a few miles away lives had been wiped out, futures destroyed.

He still felt as if this followed him like some kind of cloud, its evil luck skulking after him. He knew of Vin's worries that their prisoner might be here because of Ella and figured this fire must have put Vin to conjuring up even worse thoughts. Yet he couldn't work up the concern to really care about Ella, especially after watching those flames jump across Vin's hair and kerchief. In that moment every fear he had was concentrated, and his own inability to act just made him more fearful. After all he'd lost, the notion of losing Vin had been so overpowering as to paralyze him, making him aware that all the feelings that had been resurrected in him the past few days were stronger than he'd ever thought possible. If he'd doubted their realness, if he'd misunderstood what his own heart and head had been telling him before, he'd gotten it completely in that moment. Vin was everything to him now, the only thing standing between him and emptiness, the person holding one end of a long, red thread of life that ended inside himself. He couldn't cut that thread or let Vin lose hold of it, not now.

Chris's greatest fear was that when he stopped looking for the person who'd killed his family and it was all over, he would have no more reason to exist. It had come to consume his life and define his character. Even with friends like Buck, even with work, he could not imagine what point there was to existence after all that. He'd let Ella get away and sometimes he wondered if he'd done that on purpose, like his mind had known that without her to chase after he would just give up and die. And maybe Vin had figured that too; maybe Vin knew somehow that Chris had just stopped caring. His answers had been found. What more could he get except simple revenge, and what good was that? All Vin's prodding and support had brought him back to life, but once they finally did get Ella, what then?

Maybe this thread between them, this connection to life, would be the thing to keep Chris going. Only he wasn't sure anymore if he wanted that or not. He'd become so used to his own bitterness, his comfortable aching, that he didn't know if he could truly let Vin in the way he deserved. But did desperation explain why he would make love to Vin?

For pretty much his entire life he'd been wild. Even as a young man he'd been desperate to run off and make his own way, as far away as possible from his family in Indiana. He hadn't wanted to live the life of a property owner, he'd wanted only to slip the traces of his father's life and find what he thought of then as adventure. And he'd happily lived that life for all those years, first on his own, then with Ella. But the end had come surprisingly as he found himself stopping, reined hard to the ground when he'd discovered what it truly meant to merit someone's love and devotion with Sarah.

Chris looked over at the sleeping figures of Vin and Josiah. Maybe all these terrible events were some kind of divine retribution for how he'd lived his life before. It was easy not to believe in God, easy to hate him if he did exist, but Chris still couldn't shake the messages of his upbringing that led him to wonder if he was now suffering for his reproach of all the things he'd been taught. As if suffering carried along with him, touching each person's life, adding to his own.

When Vin had taken up with him he'd lost the chance to right his own wrongs, and now Vin had only this life, unsafe, always uncertain. Even though Chris had no regrets about shooting Eli Joe, not when it meant saving Vin's life, he knew that Vin had placed all his hopes for a different future on keeping that man alive. Now he was adrift, as though the boat he'd been holding all those notions in had split apart and he was left holding on to only a mast or spar, floating downtide. If he felt lost, was that the only reason he stuck by Chris's side? And was it right to take advantage of that?

It shamed him so to think of leaving Vin, especially for Ella, when he had tied his life so thoroughly to Chris's own. How blind Chris had been, how willfully ignorant. And Vin accepted him still, asked no more of him than friendship. But Chris was back to being his old self, his wild self, thinking only of satisfaction and desires. Vin would probably argue like hell, tell him that no one was capable of taking advantage of him, but Chris couldn't scrub the notion from his mind that he had misused Vin's affections for him.

It would have been easier if Vin had done exactly what Chris thought he would do -- punch him hard, knock him to the ground and call him terrible names. To have Vin respond so intensely, to feel that heat and want surrounding him like the flames of that fire, only made him less sure of the path he'd chosen and the actions he'd taken.

By the time Chris had finished mulling this over, the twilight of dawn was painting the sky over the trees, and he went over on stiff legs to wake Vin and Josiah. He gave them some coffee and food, then they ate silently. Each time he would look over at Vin he would see those blue eyes watching him carefully. He didn't know what to do about that silent scrutiny; there were things he needed to say to Vin, but he had no idea what they were or how to find that voice.

Vin tossed the remaining coffee on the fire before they saddled up, accepting that Chris was going to be silent for now. He wondered if it would be just for now, though, or if Chris would stay this way, leaving Vin to guess what his feelings and affections were.

At the very least he wished for some kind of acknowledgement. He trusted Chris to be silent and remote, that was simply their way together. But Chris seemed to be avoiding his eyes, as though he was ashamed not just of what they'd done, but of even admitting that it had happened.

It confounded Vin. He didn't often think of Chris as the type to regret much; he seemed to accept his decisions and actions, even if they were wrong, and then move on. If this was how he was going to act, well, Vin wasn't going to push him. But it didn't mean he had to like it.

Without talking, then, they carefully headed out on the trail. They spent the better part of the morning following some scant signs that neither Josiah nor Chris could even see, but they trusted Vin to know what he was looking for. If their prisoner was on foot he couldn't have gotten much headway on them. Still, it was slow going. The trail was leading closer to Greenville, but Chris wasn't convinced the man would be stupid enough to head to the nearest town. It surprised Chris that he hadn't made a straight line to Red Fork, but Vin was pretty sure of his footing here and that wasn't where they were going so Chris kept his mouth shut.

It was getting on to evening when Vin dismounted and looked around, kneeling down on the ground for a moment. Josiah and Chris gave each other speaking looks and Josiah shrugged. Vin sprang up and got into the saddle, and said, "This way," but he'd spun perpendicular to their current trail and taken off. All Josiah said when Chris looked at him was, "The man follows his instincts, so we'd best follow them, too." They rode off slowly, following Vin at a distance.

After a time Chris grew exasperated, but he couldn't quite figure out why. He hadn't exactly been chatty or friendly to Vin after last night, so he shouldn't be expecting reciprocal courtesies and small talk. On the other hand, Vin wasn't usually so silent as to leave them confused. It was certainly true that Vin wasn't the most talkative man around, he said just about only what was needed, but usually he would let them in on what he was doing.

So Chris gave in and caught up to Vin. "Mind filling us in?"

Vin looked over his shoulder at him, sizing him up. He knew Chris thought he was being sullen, but it wasn't that. He just wasn't going to play that game. Whenever Chris felt like telling him what was on his mind, then he would, and wild horses wouldn't drag it out of him sooner. So there was no use wasting words or worry over it. "I know where he's going." Josiah rode up hard behind them.

"You're heading back in the wrong direction," Chris said.

Vin shook his head. "What do most folks do when they get lost?"

Josiah thought for a moment. "Cry?"

That got a little smile from Vin. "Folks who don't know how to find their way or can't follow stars or the sun, they tend to go round in circles."

Chris raised his eyebrows. "But how do you know where his circle is?"

"It's a wide one. He don't know it, but he's heading back yonder \-- to town."

"So we're going back to town to catch him?" Josiah asked.

"Nope. We'll meet up with him tomorrow."

Chris liked his confidence. He always had. There was something attractive and comforting about it at the same time. Not an arrogance, nothing like it in fact, just a quiet satisfaction with his own knowledge and abilities. In someone so young it could be unpleasant, but with Vin it never rubbed anyone the wrong way. He was momentarily seized with a need to reach across and touch Vin, place a hand on his shoulder or feel the back of his hand under his own fingertips.

They made camp and every time Vin looked at Chris, he would catch him watching him, then Chris would look away quickly. After a time Vin began to think of it as another game and would do something or look away just long enough to catch Chris watching him again.

They took the same watches as the night before, and Vin lay awake for awhile. Should he slide over to where Chris was, or would Chris do the same thing as before? But there wasn't the same amount of tree cover as the night before and there would be no real hiding from Josiah's eyes. Even without that preoccupation, the thought of having a dream like last night's was enough to keep him awake.

In the morning they followed Vin where he expected their quarry's trail to lead. They hid themselves in thickets of mesquite and chaparral and waited, Vin checking their surroundings with his spyglass from time to time. Finally, shortly after noon, there he was, stumbling along, searching for water. Chris was surprised that he hadn't come upon some poor traveler and stolen his horse and food, but apparently he'd had no luck in that area and their prisoner was obviously wanting for both.

On Chris's count they sprang out, guns drawn, and the man stopped, glared at them, and then put his hands in the air silently. Chris tied him by a long rope to his horse, muttering, "Clearly, he can walk."

It was one night and another half-day back to Four Corners. At least they had something to concentrate on, Vin thought, and he wouldn't have to wonder at what Chris was thinking or trying to guess what he'd do next. Instead he turned his thoughts to finding out what their prisoner knew and the various ways he could get it out of him. Now there was something to make a man smile.


	3. Ashes to Ashes

 

> **Since I was man  
>  Such sheets of fire, such bursts of horrid thunder**   
>  **Such groans of roaring wind and rain, I never**   
>  **Remember to have heard. Man's nature cannot carry**   
>  **Th' affliction nor the fear.**
> 
> _William Shakespeare; King Lear_

 

Vin was already annoyed by their prisoner's ceaseless griping. The man appeared to believe that somehow he was owed better treatment. It hadn't even been a full afternoon's ride. Soon they'd have to make camp and Vin thought that it was time enough at last to teach this fellow a thing or two, especially for every time the fool referred to him as "that damn long-hair." If nothing else, that was making him fed up enough to beat the truth out of him.

Josiah didn't seem in the least perturbed by any of this; his face as he rode along was a show of contemplation and contentment. But in Vin's experience that was always a sign something was going on in his mind, and it would result in a fair amount of suffering for someone else.

By evening they set up camp. Chris wandered over to a watering hole nearby to refill canteens and get water for coffee. Vin watched him, aware of Chris's distance. Maybe, even despite his need to find a connection with other human beings, Chris really wasn't capable of doing that, or at least, not with Vin. Or maybe you could be too close, he reasoned. While he understood how shaming it might be, Vin also figured they were in it together and if he could cope with it, then Chris should be able to as well.

Irritated and bored -- always a dangerous combination for him -- he turned his attention to the prisoner. He hauled the man up on his feet amid much complaining. Josiah was drawn away from tying the horses, coming over to where Vin was.

"Why, are you mistreating our guest, Vin?" he asked in an amused tone.

"I'm thinking he still knows something he ain't telling us. And I don't especially feel like sharing my grub and wasting my time on someone who won't cooperate."

"Not very Christian of you."

"Suppose not." Vin squinted at the man and then shook him hard, pointing in Chris's direction. "See that man over there?"

The prisoner ignored him, not looking toward Chris.

So Vin grabbed him by the chin and turned his face in that direction. "The woman you worked for had his whole family murdered. The way I see it, that makes even more murders you're connected to than just the ones back at her ranch."

"I told you!" the man spat at him. "I don't know nothing about that lady. I worked for Jack Averill from the railroad, and he hired us out to do some work."

"But four of you got away," Josiah said. "Be a real simple thing for her to find you again, finish the job."

"I don't even know what the job is!" he yelled, and Vin yanked hard on his arms, pulling him toward a tree. "Hey!" He stumbled along, fighting as best he could, genuinely scared of Vin by now despite his best show of bravado. Already the long-hair had shoved a rifle at his head, and God only knew what he'd do next.

"Did you know there's a bunch of ways to hang a man without him actually dying?" Vin had pulled a rope off his saddle and started making a knot in it. "Or I could hang you upside down till the blood falls into your head and it swolls up. Really painful, I hear, and a slow way to die. So in the meantime I can ask you questions."

"I don't know nothing!"

Josiah shook his head at Vin. "Can't get water from a stone, Vin. The man says he don't know anything."

Vin looked at Josiah very seriously. "Now, Josiah, has anyone ever really tried? Maybe there's water there if you know where to look. Or maybe that's blood. What's the saying again?" He was tying a knot as he talked. " 'sides, I don't really believe all that much in coincidence. Him showing up in town, not too long after everything happened... just seems kinda funny, if you ask me."

Nodding, Josiah answered, "I will agree with you about that." As he said this, Chris walked up and raised an eyebrow as he looked at Vin. "We're discussing the merits of believing this man's story that he doesn't know anything about -- well, anything. Or if we should believe he in fact knows more than he's telling, and get it out of him."

"Least he could do is tell us his name before we hang him," Chris said disinterestedly.

The prisoner looked from one to the other, sweating, shaking.

"Well, you know, now that gives me an idea," Vin said. "Since the lady who bought you all was so partial to fire and seeing as how you escaped while we were trying to save our town from a fire, I'm thinking maybe that there's another way to get you talking." He walked back to the fire, picked up a piece of wood and got the end burning with a small flame. "String him up."

Josiah tied the rope quickly around the man's ankles, threw the rope over the limb, and he and Chris hauled the man up with a vicious jerk. They stretched the rope tight and tied it to another limb, with the man screaming the whole time.

Vin walked up to him and squinted down at the fellow's face. "Now, you *sure* you don't got nothing to tell me?"

"Stop it! Stop this lunatic! What in hell is wrong with you?" he screamed, jerking and trying to get away from Vin.

Vin grinned. "Why, that ain't friendly or helpful."

Chris and Josiah looked at each other, and Josiah shrugged.

"Didn't know Vin had such a temper," Chris said conversationally.

"Surprise, surprise." Josiah said, not really to Chris but more to the man hanging from the tree, "It's always the quiet ones you got to watch out for."

Josiah liked Vin when he was like this. Gleefully vengeful. The competent, quiet confidence in him was well-used when it came to such things. And this poor misguided sinner had no idea what he was really up against -- a man who wanted to protect someone he cared for, for whom protecting and caring was a calling.

"Jamison! Hogarth Jamison!" the man shouted.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Vin asked.

"It's my name!"

Vin looked at Chris and Josiah, and they shrugged in unison. "What the hell kind of name is Hogarth?" Vin asked, grinning.

"It's my name! It's just my name! Let me down!"

For fun, Vin spun him around. "Well, now, it's nice of you to tell us your name after all this trouble, so's at least we know what to call you on your grave marker." He stuck the flaming end of the wood near Jamison's face. "But I still got a notion you know more than you're telling."

Jamison jerked his face away from the glowing ember of wood, but Vin just kept poking it at him, back and forth, as Jamison hollered. Finally he yelled, "All right! All right! She asked around for us. Said there was work we agreed to do and we weren't finished. She's got someone working for her and he came after us. I don't know where she is and I don't know what his name is."

Josiah ambled back to the tree limb and untied the rope, dropping Jamison unceremoniously to the ground like a sack of potatoes. Vin stood over him holding the wood close to Jamison's face. But this time his voice was harsh and deep instead of masking laughter. "And why were you in Four Corners then?"

Twitching his face away, Jamison gasped for the breath that had been knocked out of him. He looked in Chris's direction. "I was supposed to look for him and make sure he was there. That's all."

"Guess you ain't the smartest fella around, then, are you?" Josiah said, leaning over him. "When you got a job to do, you don't go busting up saloon gals and shooting at lawmen. Tends to call undue attention to oneself."

All Jamison could do in response was curl into a ball. If he'd had any confidence before that he could get out of this, it was all gone now. He was as good as dead either way, so what did escape matter?

"We ain't going to hang you," the long-hair said to him. "Or kill you; not here. That's for the judge to decide. But you'll go back and this time you'll stand for what you done."

He felt the rope being taken from around his ankles and then heard them walk away back toward the fire. It was starting to get dark, so he hauled himself up and hobbled over to the fire. Whether they even bothered now to take him back to town for a trial didn't even matter; if this long-hair or that tall fellow who went mad on him back at the jail was any indication, he'd be dead before he could even get a trial. He sat down, shaking like a drunk without his bottle, and waited to see if they would even so much as feed him.

Chris turned his back on them and wandered farther away, back to the watering hole that was buzzing with mosquitoes and Junebugs. Vin watched him go, but busied himself giving Jamison at least a little food and water even though he wasn't in the mood to spare much. He sat and ate some, keeping his gaze on Chris. After a time he got up and walked over there, sitting down on the log next to his friend.

In Chris's hand was a small piece of wood, beginning to take form as a horse under his knife. "What's on your mind?" Vin asked.

Chris didn't look at him in return. "What makes you think I got something on my mind?"

"You always whittle when you're serious-like."

This earned a short, sharp little laugh from Chris. "Do I?"

"Yup."

He put his knife away and the piece of wood in his pocket. Vin realized he'd made a mistake then. Chris would never want to be known so well, he would shy from such a thing. Vin started to get up, but Chris put his hand on his arm.

"It's all right. Don't worry on it." Chris didn't look at him when he said it, though.

Vin looked at him quizzically.

"I don't mind. Least, I shouldn't mind," Chris responded.

The only response Vin could give was a nod. Chris could leave him tongue-tied in the most ordinary of circumstances, but the way things had been lately, Vin couldn't figure out if he was coming or going. He could think of a thousand things he'd like to say, there had to be words for the way things were between them, but he couldn't get them to come out. Like all the letters he'd learned recently had a life of their own and were staying put, refusing to be put into words inside his mouth. And how could he say what he wanted to, anyway, so Chris wouldn't run?

Chris had to feel awkward. But Chris would also have to know they both felt that way, that Vin wasn't going to do something to embarrass them or put him in a bad position. Didn't he know that?

"Sometimes I think you know me better than I know myself. Never planned on that again in my life," Chris admitted.

Vin turned his head away, looking at the trees. He wondered if Josiah was getting on okay with Jamison, but not enough to get up and check. Maybe he should try a different tack with Chris.

"Don't what he said worry on you?"

Chris sighed. "Don't know that I believe it."

This shocked Vin completely. "You got someone telling you she's around and looking for you, but you don't believe it."

"That ain't what I meant. I mean to say that it all seems too hard to believe. Can't quite accept it's true."

Vin wasn't totally sure he understood what Chris meant, but he stayed quiet, waiting for Chris to finish on his own. Presently, Chris said, "It's a hard thing to accept, that you're the cause of so much pain and misery. It ain't the picture you want to have of yourself."

"The lady was off her head, Chris. None of that's your fault, exactly."

"But it don't matter. She killed people because she wanted me in her life. Don't matter why she's mad, it only matters that the focus of her madness was me. All these folks who've suffered and died because she wanted me. How does a man live with that?"

Shaking his head, Vin answered, "I don't know. I only know that no one blames you. And if we find her, this time she won't get away. She'll pay." He put his hand lightly on Chris's forearm. "Maybe, if she does, then you can let it go."

This surprised Chris, enough that he blinked at Vin. "Don't think I could ever forget it." He was stunned that Vin would think he could forget about his family and the suffering of so many other people.

"No, not forget about what was important to you. Let go of feeling like you was responsible. You ain't the one at fault here. But I don't know that until we catch her and make her pay, you can ever stop believing that."

Now Chris knew for certain that Vin knew him too well. Yet he didn't feel crowded by it, or cornered, something surprising in itself. "How do you make amends for it, though? I was all set to go with her. Go with the woman who was responsible for killing my family, for killing other people. Like I was spitting on their memory."

"Ain't no one who'd think that, least of all people who loved you."

Chris wondered for a moment if Vin was one of those people, if he cared that much even after Chris had so cruelly turned him away when Vin tried to point out the truth. It was not something he could ask, certainly. But God, it was wonderful to think someone would care about him through all of it, would stand by him no matter what happened. He didn't even deserve this, yet he had it.

"Something I ain't told you yet."

Chris turned to him in surprise, wondering exactly what Vin had up his sleeve this time. "Keeping secrets from me now?"

"Not a chance. Just wasn't sure you were ready for it." He took a breath. "I went back to Ella's place, day before I came to see you when you was having your little fit."

Chris grinned at him. He liked that Vin never took him too seriously, even when he took himself so seriously. "Why?"

"I wanted to see... well, Ezra was suggesting we sell it, take the money for the rest of the family, Ella's husband's family, I mean. And I wasn't so sure about that. I wanted to maybe just burn it to the ground. But I thought I should go see it, see if any squatters had moved in, and it was the strangest thing. My horse got so spooked I couldn't hardly get him under control. And I felt something that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up."

"You sound like some eastern society lady with her seances."

"I know," Vin said, almost laughing.

But Chris was all seriousness again. "What did you see there?"

"Not a thing," Vin said, shaking his head. "Looked upstairs, nothing was touched. Nothing in the bunkhouse or the barn, either. Everything was empty."

"But you thought something was there. Someone?"

"Probably just being foolish."

"Might be able to believe that and brush it off if you was the foolish type. But you ain't."

Vin nodded. "So you going to let us keep an eye on you, then? Believe she's out there somewhere?"

Nodding in return, Chris said, "We're going to get her. But we have some business to attend to first."

"I'll take first watch tonight," Vin said, not quite certain if he wanted Chris to argue with him in order to make way for a repeat of the other night. He still couldn't make heads or tails of his feelings about all that, and he wanted Chris to say something -- good or bad -- simply to help Vin figure out what in hell he thought of the whole thing. Except Chris didn't argue with him, he just pulled his hat back on. "But we're sticking close to you, whether you want it or not. I ain't letting anything happen to you."

Chris stared silently past the watering hole for a long time, lost in something, Vin didn't know what. He understood and was comfortable with silence, but there was a place Chris seemed to go in his mind that Vin couldn't follow and it rankled him. Right now he didn't know if Chris was chafing at the attention, or if he was still feeling bad about the open emotion he'd shown to Vin so often lately, or all the things they'd done and said to each other. Vin didn't much care what the reason was, he just wanted Chris to stop being disgusted with himself or believing that Vin himself must be disgusted.

Vin got up and dusted his seat off. "I'm a stubborn man once I've made my mind up to something."

They both looked at each other in total surprise, blinking at what they understood now between them, and then Vin walked away. From behind him, Chris said, "Don't give up on me yet, Vin."

Looking back over his shoulder a little, Vin gave him a short nod and said, "Couldn't even if I wanted to." When he was back at their camp, he looked at Chris as he stood by the water, motionless and pensive, the edges of his serape fluttering in the wind. It had taken some time for Vin to understand that as much as Chris was fighting his way out of misery, it might be the only place he was really at home. Chris had learned to love his sorrows, Vin thought, they were a part of his life and as much a part of him as a limb or an organ. And maybe Chris's sorrows loved him, they kept the heart beating inside his chest and the skin around him intact, they eased him and soothed him. Possibly there was no place for someone else inside his life, because there was no room left beside those miseries and grief.

It didn't even matter that what was between them now was between two men, Vin was starting to think, as wrong as it should be. What mattered was that Chris could not be certain how to live his life without that familiar ache, and Vin wasn't even sure that he should try to step in the way. Maybe this was who Chris had to be and it wasn't for Vin to figure out ways to ease his troubled heart.

When Chris turned back toward them, he could see Vin watching him. It didn't bother him, really; before he might have been irritated, thinking Vin was watching him like a mother hen, but he knew it came from someplace different. It wasn't like Buck when he overtended to Chris. It was a respectful concern, a kind of quiet, humble observance from a quiet, humble man. A long time ago he'd accepted the fact that people wanted to tend to him when they got to know him, probably because he wore his heart on his sleeve. But of all the people who'd acted that way toward him, Vin was the only one who didn't make him feel crowded.

He'd slipped in under Chris's defenses, quiet as a cat, and now Chris felt like Vin was almost holding him up completely the farther he sank. They'd both stopped their travelling at the time they'd met; even when they split up, they came back together, until this last time when Ella had almost sealed it. Chris wondered if maybe there was some hint of destiny in that. The simple fact that Vin had stayed in one place against his nature and his judgment told Chris so many things, all of which he'd ignored until now.

In all his life, he'd never been one to think about the future, preferring to live his life as it came. But for the first time in ages Chris started to picture what might happen beyond the horizon line, and it took no effort at all for that picture to include Vin. Even if he hadn't quite put together a notion of how things would work, how he could fit this part of his life together with who he'd been in the past, Chris knew one thing: Vin Tanner was worth it. A life with him in it, no matter how he fit, was better than any life without him.

Love was a kind of surrender. It had always been so hard for Chris to give up parts of himself, to allow someone to hold on to his heart. Trust them to know his soul. The rewards of surrendering, though, were treasures, Chris had learned. When love was true, trust and friendship and devotion came along with it. He'd made a mistake with Ella, he'd based his notions of her on something he'd known from long ago. But with Vin, even if it wasn't the natural order of things, even if it was just one more reason for them both to burn in hell, there were no mistakes. Surrendering his affections to Vin had such a ring of truth to it that he couldn't believe it had taken him all this time to figure it out.

When he got back to the camp, Vin nodded at him in acknowledgement as Chris made himself a spot to sleep on. Chris could still taste Vin from the other night, still feel the heat of his skin and see the surprise and desire in his wide eyes. That was enough to take him into sleep, contented with his future for at least these few moments, not a prisoner of his past sorrows.

 

When they arrived back in Four Corners they went largely unnoticed in the bustling activity of a town repairing from near disaster. The sounds of hammering, sawing, and chopping were everywhere, and voices rang through the town. Buck was carrying lumber when he saw them, dropping it in a heap as they rode up.

"Well, looks like we're in for a neck-stretching party!" he shouted, rubbing his hands together.

"Now, Buck," Chris drawled, "the Judge has got to do the trial first, so don't get excited."

"Well, at least the gallows won't have to be rebuilt. The fire kindly stayed away from that!" Buck said.

Vin and Josiah hauled Jamison off the horse, and JD joined them to drag him over to the jail. Over his shoulder, Vin said to Buck, "Fella admitted he's working for Ella Gaines."

Taken aback, Buck looked from Vin to Chris, and then back again. "And he's," Buck gestured at Chris, "just out here, wandering around like he's out for a Sunday stroll? I don't like the sound of that much."

Josiah said, "You know what a bull-headed man Chris is. He'll deal with it in his own time."

But that didn't mollify Buck at all. "Just the same, I don't like the sound of all this." He scowled at Chris.

Chris came up next to him and patted him on the shoulder. "I'll be all right. Between you and Vin fretting over me, and now we've got this Jamison in custody, I don't think I'm in any great danger. Besides, once I take care of some personal business, we're going out and we're looking for *her*."

That wasn't what Buck wanted to hear. He frequently thought Chris was too cavalier about his own safety, although he certainly knew Chris would say the same thing about him.

The rest of them went inside, leaving Buck with Chris and Nathan.

"I just don't like you goin' out on your own," Buck said.

Nathan wisely said nothing.

"You're crowding me, Buck," Chris said testily. "I don't need a mother."

"Suit yourself, cowboy, but I don't like it. Can't you at least do whatever you got to with Vin or even me riding shotgun?"

"Look, Buck. Ella may be out of her head, but she ain't stupid. She won't come for me. She's already shown that by sending that weasel to do her dirty work." He pointed inside the jail. "I'll be fine. Be back before you know it."

Nathan shook his head. "I ain't one for interfering, you know that. But I think this ain't all there is to the picture."

Chris patted his shoulder again and walked away from them. Buck shook his head, shrugged his shoulders, and looked exasperatedly at Nathan. "I've known that man for a long time. But I'll be damned if I understand him. Sometimes I think he just goes out looking for trouble. Like he wants..."

"To die?" Nathan asked quietly.

Buck looked at him sharply. But Nathan was right, that was exactly what he was thinking. "Maybe so. Like he courts it or something."

"I think he used to. Don't think he does it so much no more. He got friends here, Buck, people to care for. Maybe he just don't know how to let go of all that sadness, though. Or maybe he thinks he can live through anything now 'cause he got a reason to."

Chris knew they'd be discussing the merits of letting him go off on his own, but he couldn't bear the thought of being watched like that by so many eyes. It was one thing for Vin to fret over him; quite another to have the whole group of them wringing their hands about what to do. And it didn't matter how many men Ella hired, the fact was she was only one woman, one crazy woman, and she couldn't present nearly the danger to him they liked to fancy.

It didn't take him long to fill up his warbag with some food and bullets, spare clothes, and some whisky for the trip. He'd have to camp tonight, leaving this late, but if he rode straight through he should make it by tomorrow mid-morning. He wished he had time to check in with Mary and with Ezra to see how things were progressing with the money, but this had been on his mind since the fire and he wouldn't be able to think of anything else until then.

As he rode out of town he could see all the effort to rebuild the portions ruined by fire, the sign that his plan was being put to work. Everyone appeared busy, not nearly as dejected and hopeless as he'd feared. That was of some comfort to him.

He wasn't precisely looking forward to this, but he'd learned over time that the things you *had* to do were rarely the things you felt excited to do. Ever since Ady Janson had told him most of Eagle Bend and the area around it had burned, he'd needed to see for himself what had become of his old place. Vin and Buck would understand if he explained, but he had a hard time talking about it to others. Sometimes he clung too tightly to the past, but it was trying to have so little of the physical to hang on to. He dwelled in memory because that was all that was left to him.

The photograph Vin had given him helped, for even while Sarah and Adam's faces faded from his mind, he could look at that now. Vin had helped him more than he realized.

The road ahead of him was filled with blackened fields and the charred skeletons of trees. He had a bad feeling he knew what awaited him, but he was the type to have to see it for himself. Chris just hoped Vin understood why he had to go on this journey alone.

 

 

"Where's Chris?" Vin asked when he joined some of the boys later in the saloon.

"Gone," was all JD said, frowning at his cards, then peering suspiciously at Ezra, certain he had done something with the deck.

Smacking him lightly on the back of the head, Vin walked around the table and sat down with his beer. "Gone *where*?"

"Uh, sorry. I don't know. He left after you brought the prisoner in."

Ezra nodded his head. "I believe Buck was aware of his destination."

Vin took a few sips of his beer. "I was just over to the jail. Buck didn't say nothing about him leaving."

Raising his eyebrows at Vin, Ezra said, "Did you ask him?"

That earned a sharp look from Vin. "I think considerin' the circumstances, Buck would have told me if Chris was doing a foolish thing like that."

"Maybe he didn't think it was a foolish thing," JD said brightly. "You know Chris. He don't like to be paid too much attention."

Ezra and Vin looked at each other in surprise. "My, my," Ezra said sarcastically. "Aren't you the student of human nature."

"No call for insults, Ezra," JD said cockily.

Vin shook his head and rolled his eyes. "Now, I'd love to sit around jawin' with you, but I'm more interested in finding Chris. He shouldn't be out on his own, 'less there's someone to watch his back." He got up and started for the door, but Ezra cleared his throat and Vin turned back toward him.

"Do you really think she'd find him and do something? I don't mean to doubt you, Mr. Tanner, I have the utmost respect for your perspicacity, especially where it concerns Miss Gaines, but do you think she'd be so foolish as to kidnap him or kill him?"

"She tried once before." Vin still hadn't been able to shake his dream of the other night. The image of that pure white lawn handkerchief drifting slowly to the ground stuck in his mind like a sliver. "She hired someone to kill his family. What makes you think she'd stop there?"

"Of course. You're right. But the best course of action would be to go after her, rather than letting her decide how things play out." Ezra knew that Chris wanted to find her, punish her, and he was surprised that Chris would let anything deter him from that direction. But then, Chris frequently had surprised him lately, especially when he'd given Ezra the money and allowed him to be responsible for it. Which, he suddenly remembered, he had not given Vin.

"Oh, and by the way, you are richer today than you were yesterday."

This day was getting more peculiar every moment, Vin thought. "I ain't got the least notion what you're talking about."

"Stutz's ill-gotten gain. Mr. Larabee put me in charge of distributing the cash to the unfortunate victims of the conflagration."

"Oh yeah, he told me about that."

JD interjected, "And now we all have some of it, too. A lot!"

It would come in handy, of course, but money had never meant that much to Vin. "So we're keeping some of it?" Chris hadn't mentioned that part to him. And anyway, he hadn't had any time to think about this, or care. More important things to put his mind to.

"Indeed," Ezra said dryly. "I've been empowered to distribute the largesse of the last thousand among us. Not exactly a windfall, but enough that we could possibly get you to a barber." He gestured at Vin's hair.

"Well, you just hang on to my piece, will you? More pressing things to do than get my hair cut." He smiled at Ezra, enjoying the thought of the money burning a hole in his pocket.

"Are you planning to ride out right now?" JD asked.

"I got to talk to Buck first, find out what Chris said exactly. But then I reckon to head yonder to his place, before I get a panic on."

"You'll miss the dance tonight if you leave now," JD said.

A sense of dread seized Vin, squeezing his heart. "Dance?" he asked, thinking of that awful nightmare the other night.

Ezra made a sound of disapproval in his throat, and said, "Well, as much as one can have in this burg. A party of sorts, to celebrate our survival." He looked curiously at Vin. "Whatever is the matter with you, Vin? You're as white as a ghost."

That was a little too much for Vin and he turned away from Ezra, walking out the door with the other two following him. He couldn't even imagine telling Chris about that dream and its effect on him, let alone telling these two. Ezra would never let something like that go; Vin would be mocked by everyone for the rest of his life here.

It wasn't like he thought it was a clairvoyant dream -- he didn't really believe in that sort of thing -- but all this had aroused his superstitions. The unreality of the events of the past week or so only made it all seem highly suspicious.

Vin turned to JD. "I ain't much for dancing, anyways."

"That's not true!" JD countered. "I remember you dancing up a storm with Charlotte when we--" he looked puzzledly at Ezra, who was making throat-cutting motions next to Vin.

"Let's just say I don't want to dance right now, all right?" He was growing cross and didn't want to take his nerves out on the kid or on Ezra, since they'd all been getting on so well lately. He walked off down the street, listening to JD humphing after him. And quietly, so that he could barely hear it, Ezra said, "Something is vexing him." It still didn't make Vin want to bare his soul.

Instead of finding Buck at the jail, though, he saw Josiah instead. "Where's Buck? I wanted to ask him where Chris went."

Josiah looked at their prisoner and then back at Vin. "Well, Buck was getting a little carried away with tormenting our man here. Nathan thought it best to give him something else to do." He grinned broadly when he said it.

"Easy to do," Vin said dryly. "Feller like him brings out the worst in someone."

"True. Are you heading out after Chris, then?"

Vin sat on the edge of the desk and nodded.

"But you seem worried," Josiah said. "You don't really think he's in danger, do you?"

Considering it for some time, Vin was quiet and stared at the floor. Finally he said, "Do you believe that dreams can turn real?"

"You mean like foretelling the future?"

Vin nodded.

"I suppose. There's some folks think the mind can only tell you things you need to know when you're asleep. That dreams are a way of finding out what we're really thinking or feeling. 'Course, I don't know what I believe about that." He studied Vin a bit, and then said in a conversational tone, "This got anything to do with that strange feeling you got when you went to Ella's spread? All this seems connected, to you?"

It never failed that Josiah saw right through him, and Vin gave a shy smile, nodding. "I know how mad it sounds, maybe that's why I can't even quite say it myself. And then I even start to wonderin' if she could have started that wildfire herself."

"Be a stupid way to try to get Chris back. You can control a small fire, but not something that large. No, I think that much is coincidence. As for the rest, I'm willing to believe that your mind is telling you something maybe you're not aware of. You'd do best to listen to it."

Josiah didn't like to give too much credit to things like superstition and nerves, but he also believed there was much more to the world than the physical. Traditional spiritual pursuits aside, his mind had been opened up enough by studying other religions and peoples that he believed it benefited everyone to keep their minds open. The more prepared you were for the unlikely, the better. And he trusted Vin's instincts. Anyone spending that much time alone out in lonely prairies or long trails, with the unnerving quality of those vast distances and the constant possibility of death, would have a good sense of what was right with the world and what was wrong. If Vin thought that things were wrong here, then Josiah didn't doubt they just might be.

"In that case, guess I better get after Chris, then. Figure out what I got on my own mind, and keep an eye on him at the same time."

Josiah laughed loudly at that, waving him on his way. As he stepped out the door, Josiah said to him, "Vin. If you got such bad feelings about all this, be careful. Be extra careful." He didn't want to push the matter and he knew that Vin would want to help Chris on his own, but he couldn't ignore the possibilities here.

By the time Vin was ready to ride, Ezra had come back after him. He seemed all seriousness and concern, quite a contrast to how he'd been earlier in the saloon.

"I think your nerves are spreading."

Raising an eyebrow, Vin quirked his head and finished tightening the straps.

Ezra continued, "I've got a distinctly uncomfortable feeling about this whole situation now. Before you go out, I'd like you to take this." He handed Vin the Derringer that he kept up his sleeve, along with the contraption he'd built for sliding it out.

"Aw, no," Vin replied, holding his hands up. "I got everything I need. And we can't leave you with nothing."

"I insist." Ezra patted both the gun resting on his hip and the one in his shoulder holster. "Besides, I think I'm ready for anything! And it's certainly helped me in more than a few situations to have something completely unexpected at my disposal in the event of trouble." He pulled at Vin's coat. "Let's take this wretched piece of animal hide off you and I'll show you how it goes."

He helped Vin strap it on. Since Vin was a bit taller, it fit slightly higher on the wrist. Vin still wasn't certain he wanted to take it, but he knew that to reject Ezra's offer again would be an insult in the face of such generosity and concern. He untied the reins from around the hitching rail.

"There," Ezra said, pleased with himself. "Now, just in case you're ambushed or otherwise taken by surprise, you will at least have some kind of backup."

Swinging into the saddle, Vin looked down at Ezra and reached out to shake his hand. "Thanks, Ezra. It's very kind, indeed. I don't think anything bad'll happen, least not for a while until we go out looking for her. But I'm mighty grateful." Ezra gave his hand a firm shake, and he took off.

Vin was at the end of town, heading in the direction of Chris's place, when he heard Buck call out after him. He came riding up on his big grey. "No, sir! Not that way!"

"Well, then, which way?" Vin asked with some amusement. "I been looking for you, *now* you show up."

"Other end of town. Towards Eagle Bend."

Reining around, Vin asked, "He say why or what he was looking for?"

"Nope. Seemed like he had something on his mind, though." He peered hard at Vin. "You know what's eating him?"

"I might," Vin said, wondering at how he had displaced Buck in the role of being the one who was expected to understand Chris's thoughts. "But I think I'm mostly just going to keep an eye on him, stay back and not crowd him."

"You do that, then." Buck leaned over and shook Vin's hand, a gesture that surprised Vin completely. "No one better to watch his back. But you watch yours, too."

He rode off and Vin watched him for a moment before spurring his own horse and riding away. It wasn't even a challenge to follow Chris's path, and before long he'd caught up with him. He didn't push too hard, staying back a bit so that whatever Chris was aiming to do, he'd be able to, but safely. There'd been enough times that Chris had gone off half-cocked and they'd all assumed him to be safe when in fact he wasn't, so Vin didn't necessarily trust that everything would go smoothly anymore.

Chris may have had a stubborn streak a mile long, but that didn't mean Vin had to honor it. He was every bit as stubborn, and he had one goal in mind right now -- keeping Chris safe. Nothing else mattered to him. Even without that dream preying on his peace of mind, even if Jamison had not shown up in town or admitted his employment by Ella, Vin would still be jumpy about things as they were.

It was getting on dusk and Chris would make camp soon. Wherever he was headed, it was taking them through the worst of the fire damage. The land around him was charred and stark, the few trees burned down to stumps in most cases, or leafless and blackened by soot. It mirrored his bleakness right now. He tried to think of Chris's words the other day, that he should not give up on him, but somehow his leaving town so quickly and without a word to Vin made that more difficult. Vin made camp himself and settled in to sleep. He wouldn't ever give up on Chris, really, no matter how it played out. But he had no idea just how far he'd have to go to follow him.

 

Everything was gone now. Before, only the house had been gutted by the fire, but everything else had remained untouched. Even last year when he'd been here with Blackfox, most of it was still relatively intact, weathered these past few years, but intact. He'd kept this land in spite of its laying abandoned, unable to give it up completely and sever that link with his past.

Now, all around him, nothing but blackness. The hills that rolled up behind the western part of the property were carved by black paths; most of the trees had burned away. The windmill was reduced to cinders, even the stone foundation of the house was coated with soot and ash, crumbled in parts because of the heat. But the worst was the grave markers. He could see only faintly the outline of the small fence that ringed their graves, its pickets receded to tiny nubs in the earth. Chris knelt down on the filthy ground, groping in the cinders to find any hint of the markers. After a time he dug up a small piece of wood, charred and patterned with cracks and lines. He smudged away some of the char and could make out that it was from the crosspiece, two sections of wood barely held together by a weakened nail. Only part of a letter remained, and he could not tell whether it was Sarah's or Adam's.

Chris clutched the piece and knelt there in silence, listening to the wind wash harshly across this barren spot, where before it had rustled softly through tree limbs and rippled the long grasses. Inside him such a pain arose as to take his breath away, squeezing his lungs and his heart. Before, he could pretend there was something left of them besides a memory; now that was gone, as if he'd committed such wrongs that even his last trace of them had to be stolen away in an everlasting punishment. There was nothing crueler than God when he was wronged. If Chris had not sinned against their memory, would this fire have taken everything away, or spared it? Fire was the true hand of God, a killing hand.

He thought of Ady Janson and everything his family lost. Sad, he'd called it. What was the difference between sad and tragic? Chris wondered. Was it only your personal experience that made you think such a thing was merely sad, rather than truly tragic? He clutched his fingers around the piece of wood, hot tears of shame and rage testing against the corners of his eyes. He could not break down again, absolutely would not, but it welled up inside him like a tide, pushing against his resolve.

About a hundred yards away Vin had left his horse ground-tied and walked closer to where he saw Chris dismount. He had not been here before, but he knew right away that this must be Chris's old property. His heart sank at the apprehension of it, the ruined remains of something already lost and horribly painful. Through his spyglass he watched Chris, but when he could see Chris's head drop, the way he knelt motionless with his hands resting palms up on his knees, Vin knew it was time to stop following Chris and go to him. It was worth the risk of being hollered at, because Chris needed friendship right now.

When he'd asked Chris a few days ago what it had been like to be married, the answer Chris gave had surprised him. Somehow he'd thought to hear grander words. But that it had been so simple and plain made Vin realize all the more how much it had been for Chris to lose. Something grand and romantic would be outside what Vin really knew of affection, so he could not hold it as dear to his heart; simple, honest truths like Chris had described he could figure. Only now maybe Vin felt it too much, because his heart was cracked in two over the despair he must now feel.

He approached Chris on foot. As he got closer Vin could see that his shoulders shook. It was difficult to reconcile, seeing him like this again and knowing how deep these wounds ran. Every time Vin thought the bleeding had been stanched, it seemed to begin anew, cut after cut after cut, right from his heart.

Trying to pull himself under control, Chris had become aware of someone's presence, but not concerned enough to turn around or draw his gun. Even far away, he could tell it was Vin. Chris gulped in a deep breath and dropped the piece of marker onto the black ground. Then Vin walked up to him, calling his name. He stood at his back and said, "Chris, it's me." Chris nodded his head, but had no real desire to get up. Vin put his hand on Chris's shoulder, holding it there for a moment, and then he knelt down beside him.

What point was there in hiding his feelings from Vin? They had been so much to each other that it was useless to pretend he was in control of his emotions, that he wasn't full up with despair. He'd thought to get here and see the damage, aware that he would feel a rush of pain wash over him at beholding it, but still he thought he could get back to town in one piece, be calm. Everyone would be none the wiser.

Of course it would be Vin who would come after him and find him. If there was anyone truer than Vin, he could not imagine it. Slowly he turned his face to look at Vin, trying a wan smile on for good measure, but he could barely muster that. Vin looked at him evenly, not saying anything, laying his cut-down Winchester on the ground. "How'd you know it was me? Could have been anyone sneakin' up on you."

"Wouldn't be anybody else. I could always tell."

"See right through me, don't you?" Vin saw the path that tears had cut along Chris's dusty face, and had the urge to smooth them away, but he thought that inappropriate here. "Did you expect this?"

"Some," Chris said, hitching in a shuddering breath. "Spoke to a man from near here, back after the fire. He told me nearly everything was wiped off the land, and I wanted to come here, hoping that maybe... somehow this would be spared, I suppose. Since we'd already had our own hell here once. But it wasn't spared."

"No." Vin picked up the charred wood. "Was this a grave marker?"

Chris nodded solemnly and wiped the back of his hand across his face. "I don't even know which one it is. And it's all that's left."

"It ain't all. They're in your heart, they'll always be there."

"I can scarcely remember their faces. If you hadn't given me that picture, I'm not even sure what I'd do. Because they're almost gone now. It's like I lost them because I lost who I was, when I was with Ella."

"All's you're forgetting is their faces. But you won't forget the feeling of them." For a while he considered what he could say to make Chris feel less guilt. "I think that we're supposed to forget some things, so we can go on. But you never forget the feeling of them."

Chris just looked at him sadly. "It would have been better to never feel that way."

"That ain't true, and I know you know it." Vin took a lock of Chris's hair between his thumb and forefinger, and smoothed it back against his head. He touched his fingertips lightly to Chris's cheekbone, but did not linger. It would be wrong to be so forward, in this place, at this time. And yet the way Chris allowed this made Vin feel more certain than he had for days that Chris had the same affections for him.

"Adam was so young, I figure he was only beginning to understand that he had parents who loved each other, who loved him. Knew what that meant. And then to leave him so abandoned, so alone, to die like that. He never really knew how I felt. How could he? He was just a small boy." Chris's breath came out in a raggedy little sigh, his shoulders shaking with it.

"He knew. Believe me, he knew."

At first those words sounded like nothing more than the usual platitudes people uttered upon learning of his loss, when they couldn't possibly know how it felt for him or how his family had felt, but then the light of understanding grew within him, painfully. God, of course Vin knew.

Chris looked down, then up at Vin from under his brows. He could not imagine ever living his life without this friendship.

"How did I get here, Vin? How'd I get so far from everything I should have done?"

The afternoon sun cast its light against them, lending its soft shadow to the angles of Chris's face. Vin would need to get Chris on his feet and going soon so they could be far away from these ghosts by the time night fell. If they rode hard they could reach Chris's place by night. And it would be safest to get him out of here so he could absorb everything and take steps to move ahead. That was how Chris was, Vin had learned so recently -- he had to get the feelings out before he could cope and do what he needed to.

"You didn't stray so far."

"I lost them. I nearly lost you. Maybe most of all I lost myself."

Touching Chris's shoulder, Vin said, "You can't be that lost now, nor never again. Because I will always be there to find you. You'll never lose your way."

He stood up and put his hands under Chris's arms, then hauled him up onto his unsteady feet. Once Chris dusted himself off and put his hat back on he looked at Vin, when such an intense swell of affection washed over him that he felt wobbly again. Vin would always find him. But he'd known that, in a way, since the moment they'd met. It had just taken him all this time to really understand it. He'd had to hear Vin say it.

You could spend your whole life looking for someone as caring and true as this. If you were lucky, you found it once; if you were even luckier than you had a right to be, you found it twice. He didn't believe he deserved it, but he had it. Both of them had not even known they were lost and had found each other, recognizing it instantly. Something in the glint of an eye or the twitch of a head, or maybe even the tone of a voice, but they'd known it. He was warmed by the knowledge of finding this, of being found by Vin. He could endure anything.

Taking Chris's hand, Vin hooked his thumb around Chris's and they clutched each other's hands tightly for a moment. Vin bent down and picked up the piece of wood and put it in Chris's pocket. They walked in silence back to their horses, which were both getting restless, and turned back in the direction of Four Corners. Chris looked back over his shoulder, wondering if he'd ever see this place again, or even if he should. Then he turned to Vin, nodded, and they rode away.

But he hadn't looked far enough to see the faint shape of a rider on the hill to the west who had been pacing back and forth, watching them. As soon as they were out of range the rider turned and galloped off over the crest of the hill.

 

They rode by starlight through the woods just before getting to Chris's place, but knowing Vin was leading them -- with his ability to locate anything in any situation -- Chris was perfectly comfortable. By the time they reached the clearing of his property he began to feel better, feel like a rational man again in spite of everything he'd been through today. After they took care of the horses and got their gear away, Vin shyly stammered out that he was going to the creek and grabbed the water bucket.

He ambled off, a little embarrassed to admit to washing up for Chris. Vin just didn't want to spend any time close to Chris without having cleaned up a little. Maybe they wouldn't repeat what had happened the other night; he wasn't even certain yet whether he thought they should, but if it happened, he certainly wasn't going to be filthy and sweaty. The water was cool as he wiped the grime away, and it gave him time to consider what he wanted and what he thought Chris wanted.

When he came back Chris was standing on the porch, wiping at his own face with a sacking towel. Vin stood still for a moment, hesitating at the porch line. Chris beckoned to him, and tentatively, Vin followed.

They went inside Chris's place, where he had already lit the lamp in the corner. They'd been away for many days now and everything had picked up a coating of ash dust, even though the fire hadn't come this far. Vin threw his gear down in the corner, as well as his coat, rig, and hat.

"Something to drink?" Chris asked.

"A little whisky will do me just fine," Vin said, smiling. He felt self-conscious of a sudden, worried that he would do or say the wrong thing, just *be* wrong somehow.

Chris poured both of them a shot and handed one to Vin, but just set his own on the table. He hung his hat on the back of the chair and then put his rig away, clearing a space on the bunk. He took the empty glass back from Vin, who arched an eyebrow at him in amusement.

"Not even gonna offer me another? I'll drink yours if you don't want it -- don't want good whisky to go to waste."

Instead of answering Chris kissed him with hard, quick kisses that burned Vin's mouth. Chris's fingers tangled in his hair and Vin put his own hands on Chris's shoulders, up along his neck.

When Chris stepped back and gazed him, Vin sighed with a shudder and dropped his head down. "Better than my memory," he said, and looked up again.

"I'm sorry I took so long. I had to sort it out--"

Vin shook his head hard and poked a finger at Chris's chest. "Don't you start that. I ain't listening to any apologies again."

Chris loved Vin when he was like this, his raspy voice chastising, his blue eyes dazzling with their mischief. He grabbed Vin and kissed him again, delirious with the pleasure it brought him. Vin's hand had moved down along his backside and he could feel the fingers tracing a pattern along his rump, his flank.

Vin pulled him back toward the bed and they fell to the mattress, the straw crackling underneath in the silence of the evening. Vin's mouth was wet and hot, the whisky a faint undercurrent. His tongue played over Chris's tongue, his lips, his teeth. Vin bit at his mouth gently, teasingly, and Chris believed he wouldn't even last as long as he had the first time. He could feel that hot tingling racing from his groin, through his gut, up his chest as Vin pulled his lower lip between his teeth.

Slowly Chris stripped off Vin's clothing and then his own, in between those lush whisky-tinged kisses and bites. He ran his fingers along Vin's chest hair and the firm stomach, kissing down his neck and chest.

Chris sighed against Vin's body, alive with the affection that bloomed in his heart. Flowers blossomed with sunlight and water; even in the desert a cactus would open petals after a winter rain. But love bloomed at night, in quiet spaces where people came together in the darkness.

Ranging his hands along Chris's torso, Vin marveled at his lean, strong body, that it was so close now and under his own hands like this. He could feel Chris's heart beat so strongly, feel the sweet hardness of his cock against Vin's thigh. His hand came up between Vin's thighs and Vin sighed into his neck, letting Chris tempt him and toy with him.

"You think we're any more ready for this than the other night?" Chris asked, his lips against Vin's ear.

"Doubt it," Vin said, arching against Chris's body. "We did okay though, right?"

"Think so."

"You know what we're doing here?" Vin asked, smiling his most wicked smile, teasing Chris's lips with his tongue.

"Nope. You?"

"No idea. Think we should stop?"

"Nah," Chris said gravely. "Best if we just soldier on."

Vin laughed low in his throat, which only served to inflame Chris more. "If we got to, why then, we got to."

Chris felt the hot-hard flesh beneath him and said, "Oh, I think we got to. Absolutely." He moved his hand beneath Vin's back and moved him over on his stomach, kissing down Vin's shoulder blade, the edge of his hip, the buttocks. Just for the hell of it he sank his teeth lightly into Vin's rump, and instead of getting bucked off, Vin moaned into the mattress, shifting in a way that made Chris nearly mad with lust. When he leaned up over Vin on one arm, he cast Chris a sly look.

"What would you like me to do?" Chris asked him softly, licking the edge of Vin's ear.

Vin dug his fingers into the sheet and twisted sideways, shuddering at Chris's attentions. He'd never imagined it this way, this heady mix of fierceness and tenderness, laughter and desire. It was some kind of fever dream, something that felt so real but just couldn't be. "Anything you do is what I want."

Chris put his forehead against Vin's, his fingertips tracing up and down Vin's bare back. He had no idea how to say all the things he wanted to say to Vin right now; talking wasn't usually the way he responded to this much physical excitement, but he wanted to wrap his arms and legs around Vin, feel what they'd felt the other night and tell him how much love and esteem he had. It overwhelmed him, so much so that he'd been struck dumb in the face of it. But Vin knew him, his thoughts and feelings. Maybe he didn't have to tell him in so many words.

Vin put his hand over the deep red scar of the gunshot wound on his side and breathed raggedly in. Then he ran his fingertips over other scars of Chris's, causing a shudder at each one. He asked about them all in turn, and Chris answered with knife or fight or axe or saw, until Vin almost laughed. "How'd you ever get to be this old?"

Ignoring that, Chris ran his fingers over two sets of long cuts across Vin's inner arms, four each. "Blood ritual," was all Vin said, and Chris found another scar just above his left hipbone, what had clearly once been a large, round wound. "That was just damnfool stupidity," Vin answered. "Horse threw me and I fell onto a big ol' bush, and the limb just went right through me. Then I got the fever from it and I nearly went under."

He said it so matter-of-factly that Chris shivered. Pressing his hand to the scar, Chris breathed hard against Vin's neck. "No," he said, and Vin just responded quietly, "Yes." He stared at Chris, then said, "I said I'd always be there, but you know I ain't gonna live forever." Chris just pushed tighter against Vin.

Beside him Vin rolled all the way onto his back, then reached over and pushed Chris's hair away from his forehead. He put both his hands on Chris's ribcage and pulled him atop his body, sighing as skin met skin. Vin stroked Chris's cock with his hand, playing on his aching flesh. Chris didn't necessarily know what they were doing but it didn't matter at all, he could feel himself building to a climax already. Some things nature took care of. This was truly blissful ignorance, then, he thought and laughed a little to himself.

At that, Vin stopped and smiled at Chris. "Better not be me you're laughin' at, cowboy."

"Not a chance. Just thinking that for amateurs, we're doing right fine."

"That we are," Vin answered, and moved over, sliding atop Chris who now lay on his belly underneath Vin, spreading his legs apart. Vin's cock slid between Chris's thighs, along his ass, and he gasped with the surprise and pleasure of it, moving himself up and down, matching Chris's own movements.

Beneath him Chris panted and writhed as Vin slid his hand around, again enclosing Chris's cock in his hand, moving it furiously up and down as he bucked his hips. The friction on Vin's own flesh was tight, then slick, then nearly painful, then wonderful again, and he couldn't feel anything but the heat in his hand and the heat in his groin. Falling, fast and far, down into some brilliant warmth that swallowed him whole and then he could hear sounds around him, the creaking of the bunk slats and the harsh panting of Chris, and his own voice as he gasped out in fulfillment.

Somewhere along this line -- he hadn't realized when -- Chris had already come, and Vin's hand was warm and sticky with it. Chris pulled Vin's hand away, whispering at him, "Can't take that anymore, I'm all done in." He turned over to face Vin, settling together as Vin rolled over onto his side. He didn't want to leave that embrace or separate his skin from Chris's, so he hooked a leg over his slim hip and put his hand flat against Chris's chest.

"As lessons go, I could get used to this kind of learning," Chris said softly to Vin, covering his face with kisses. He felt so drowsy and warm, complete. He could stay here for the rest of his life, just with Vin, just like this.

Vin absently moved his fingertips across Chris's chest, already starting to drift into sleep, the sound of the crickets outside the only thing he could hear above the sound of Chris's breathing.

When he opened his eyes again Chris was still lying next to him, one arm bent up under his head, the fingers of the other moving gently through his hair. He rolled over onto his back, trying to rub the sleep from his eyes, but Chris remained still. "You watchin' me sleep?" Vin asked.

"Mm-hm." He didn't care how silly Vin must have thought that; he felt so much warm affection for him right now that embarrassment wasn't even part of his worries.

Vin's face colored, and Chris began to laugh low in his chest at the blush.

"You're an idiot, you know that?" Vin said in his hoarse voice.

"That I am." He couldn't think of anyone he'd rather be so foolish over.

"I'm probably lyin' here drooling like a stumpsucker of a horse, or I got my mouth open and I look like a landed fish."

"Yeah, but it looks good on you."

Vin laughed silently, rolling over onto his stomach, nestling close to Chris on the narrow bed. He put his hand on Chris's hip. "I keep thinking that maybe we should be damned for all this. Two men... but I don't. I don't even want to ever go back. What I mean is, if this is damnation, then I'll stay here for my penance."

Chris slid over and moved atop Vin, draping himself over his back and pushing Vin's hair off his neck. He touched the singed part, rubbed it between his fingers and felt that icy clutch in his gut as he thought of how close he'd come to losing Vin. "I'm takin' a scissors to this tomorrow and we're fixing you up. You're all lopsided."

"Always knew you only cared about looks. No one with a fancy rig and jingle-bobs on his spurs could expect any less, I reckon."

Trailing his lips softly over Vin's shoulders, then down his backbone, Chris laughed against his warm skin. He found his way back up to Vin's neck and pressed his lips to the soft skin behind his ear. "I keep thinking that it's all a dream again, like dreaming of Sarah and Adam. That I can't be happy again, but I am."

It was almost too much for Vin to handle, to hear these words coming from this man, to feel the white heat of desire that crept through his body at Chris's touch, and he could scarcely breathe. "You were happy with Ella, before you knew, though."

"Maybe Ezra and Josiah are right," Chris said, his breath breezing across Vin's skin. "Maybe I need someone to take care of, to help. I don't think Ella ever needed that, even before she ran mad. I wanted to be with her, but I don't know that I ever had that same feeling like I had before, like I got now."

"Hell, Larabee, is that what you think of me? I'm somebody needs taking care of?" He glared sideways at Chris, but was grinning. He snaked a hand up alongside Chris's muscled thigh. Even if he wasn't kidding, it wouldn't have bothered him that Chris felt that way; he knew what was meant and the spirit intended.

Chris just grinned at him and Vin could feel the smile of his lips against his neck. "I want to take care of you, see to your needs and make you content. Make you glad you stayed here. What do you think'll make you feel that way?"

Throat constricted, heart beating too fast, Vin turned so he could look at Chris eye to eye. He gripped Chris's shoulders. "This. Only this."

"My bed?" Chris asked quietly.

"Your affections." He couldn't say love, was still so unsure how far he should expect this to go. Even with all the tender words Charlotte had expressed to him so long ago, he still had wondered whether, if he'd met her any other time, she would have felt that way about him. He'd never had the confidence to be certain of someone, if they desired *him* and not just what he represented. If Chris felt like this, was it only because he was so lonely and needed someone to care for?

He knew Chris, though, knew that Chris understood his own heart and was not afraid to show how he truly felt. There was so much confidence in him, so much honesty and strength, that Vin sometimes wondered how he could have attracted such attentions from someone like that.

"You've got what you want, then," Chris said, and Vin put his fingertips on the cleft of Chris's lower lip, softly tracing over its shape. "All that, and more."

Vin wanted to ask why, how, but his face must have given him away, for Chris said, "When I first met you, I didn't have any doubts about you at all. I saw you standing there with that gun, and I thought you were someone I'd like to know, someone like me. Even when anybody's tried to get me to doubt you, I knew something about you. You're true. In every meaning of that word. You're brave, honest, and strong and loyal, straight -- nothing false about you. I want to be all that for you."

Putting both arms around Chris, Vin buried his face in his hair, taking in the scent of him, the texture. He couldn't want any more than this, because this was all there was. Nothing in his life, no regard or affections could have prepared him for this feeling, this belonging, this wanting. Chris leaned down and kissed him, moving slowly down his body, taking Vin's sex into his mouth. Vin was lost completely, his body singing with pleasure.

Chris looked up toward Vin's face to see the effect of his actions. Vin's head was thrown back so it was impossible to see his eyes, but it didn't matter. Each movement he made, each tease of his tongue or lips made Vin sigh loudly, every noise they had stifled that one night now coming back with full force. Vin's head thrashed from side to side, his mouth was open, wet lips gleaming in the low light of the cabin. And all it did was make Chris harder; he couldn't believe he was doing this and feeling all this, but here it was, an intensity of feeling that had become a mystery to his heart during all those lost years. The difference between sex with someone you loved and someone you barely knew was as wide as the plains. He'd satisfied his body before, but not his heart. Vin's fingers gripped the sheet and clenched, unclenched, his leg moving along Chris's side, before he finally came, hot and bitter exploding in Chris's mouth. He waited for Vin to subside and then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, moving up beside Vin who somehow had the presence of mind to wrap his hand around Chris's own cock, slick already, achingly hard.

Vin's eyes were still closed, but he was smiling so broadly Chris thought his face would crack. Although Vin's hand was moving up and down on him, fast and then slow, squeezing and then stroking, Chris thought that if he did nothing else for the rest of his life but earn this look from Vin and make him that happy, it would be a good life indeed. He was filled with love, a river of it flowed through him, fast and wild, pure and deep, overspilling its banks. Vin stroked one more time and Chris felt himself go all the way over the edge, his body twitching and bucking under Vin's very sure hand.

He had so many things to say and nothing at all, because he thought that Vin must understand everything. Vin turned to him with that gentle, crooked smile, and opened his eyes. Chris always felt helpless under those eyes.

"Think we could stay here forever and no one would notice?" Vin asked him.

"That was my plan."

Vin smiled. "Wild horses."

"Yeah." Chris wanted to blurt out everything he could about his feelings, cocoon himself here with Vin and shut out everything else. He felt so awkward at this -- with a woman it had been easy to show loving and tender feelings, but he wasn't certain how to do it with a man, especially one so silent and strong as Vin. "Stay with me. Not just tonight. Always."

"I wish we could." He turned a little melancholy then. "Hide away, like no one would see." Vin looked wistfully at Chris. "Everyone minds their business, but I got to wonder how much folks would notice."

"I'd take that risk. I gave up on God and his rules a long time ago. If folks think someone ought to live life the way *they* say, I ain't buying that."

"I know. But there's people would say this will surely send us to hell." He sighed. "I reckon it don't matter, least ways it shouldn't matter, who you feel for. You love who you love." Vin looked hard at him, trying to see if he'd scared Chris off. "Hope you don't mind me saying that."

Chris pressed his lips to Vin's forehead and brushed his hair back. "Nope. All you'd do is beat me to it." Time played such terrible tricks on you. You spent all your days trying to forget pain, to live your life as best you could. And when you finally found happiness it sped by you so fast you almost couldn't grab it. He'd taken so long to get here; if only there were some way to really stay.

 

In the morning Vin rose first, quietly, letting Chris sleep for a while. Yesterday would have been such a day for him, filled with so many emotions, and Vin wanted to let him rest. He'd cooked some breakfast and left it for Chris, and now he'd get the horses ready so they could head off in due time. But not too hurriedly; it was difficult to leave and return to their everyday life. He knew this wasn't the end, could tell from Chris's behavior that he would not regretfully shut Vin out again, but things could never really be the same after this. He'd waited so long for this kind of feeling, this connection; he hadn't planned on it being something he'd have to hide to such lengths. But whatever it took, it was all right with him as long as Chris was there.

As he stepped outside into the fresh morning air, he finished dressing by tying his kerchief around his neck and then pulling on his jacket over the metal gear of Ezra's Derringer get-up. He left his hat and rig inside and would get those when they were ready to go. Vin couldn't see the horses and was momentarily alarmed that they hadn't shut the gate last night. He walked closer to see if they simply hadn't repaired it right and the horses had got out, but as he came around he saw something on the ground, fluttering along. A pure white handkerchief. Then the sound of boots on grit and he looked up, cold fear seizing his heart, drawing for the rifle that wasn't there because he hadn't yet strapped his rig on. Just then a large man swung a shotgun stock at his head. He ducked, but was hit from the other side by someone else. As his vision started to blur Vin saw her standing there, her dress so blazingly white against the red dust.

For a moment he'd forgotten the Derringer; it was not his usual weapon and it didn't register in his mind that he had something to defend himself with. He could hear Chris step out onto the porch, shouting something, but another blow caught him on the jaw and he fell into blackness.

Chris rushed to get his gun when he saw the commotion but was tackled from behind by the larger man, feeling his ankle snap beneath him as he hit the wall. Pain screamed through him and he yelled out, then another man was there and he kicked out at them, trying to run for a weapon. He had no idea what they were after but had seen Vin go down and knew he had to protect them both, even if he was barely capable of walking. He stumbled forward, only to be grabbed from behind and his head banged hard against the window frame, his vision sparkling. Behind him he heard a woman's voice -- Ella's, he realized -- shout something to them, and then they hit him again and he was out.


	4. Dust to Dust

 

> **You left me boundaries of pain**   
>  **Capacious as the sea,**   
>  **Between eternity and time,**   
>  **Your consciousness and me.**
> 
> _Emily Dickinson_

 

His mouth felt like it was made of cotton when he came to, and there was a pain in Vin's gut that knocked the wind out of him. He was strapped over his horse like a fifty-pound flour sack and his hands were tied to the stirrup. Loosely, but they were still tied. Trying to look around to see if Chris was there and if he was all right didn't accomplish anything -- he couldn't get his head up enough to see past the horse's withers or flank, and then each time he raised his head the swish of its tail would sting him in the face. Bottleflies and horseflies were biting his face, attracted to the blood that must be caked on his skin, and only serving to bother the horse even more.

He had no idea how long he'd been out, but it didn't take much to knock him back into unconsciousness, unable to breathe and being bounced around like a toy. When he was aware again his mind felt fuzzy and grey; he couldn't see much beyond shapes or hear anything but buzzing voices. At first he wasn't even sure what was happening or where he was, then a sound cut through the low-level din, a woman's voice saying Chris's name. Ella. That was who it was. Her handkerchief had lain on the ground just like in his dream, attracting his attention and leaving him unprepared for the assault.

Someone threw him to the ground and he felt rope, rough and smelling of creosote, wound around his chest and arms. Tying him to a post or something. It was hot out, really hot, and the sun beat down on his hatless and bleeding head. Vin's lips were cracked, his throat stuck together. He wanted water of course, but knew it was pointless to ask for it. Even begging wouldn't get a response from his captors.

She wouldn't kill Chris. Vin knew that much. But she would kill *him.* Possibly keep him around just long enough to use for leverage and then get rid of him. There was no other reason to tie him up here instead of killing him back at Chris's place. Even that much thinking tired him out, and he felt overwhelmed, so weary and so hurt. He let his head sag back against the post and fell under the grey haze.

Chris woke much later. His leg was numb and he could feel such searing pain in his shoulder and side that he nearly screamed upon awakening. Taking quick, panting breaths, he tried to figure out what was wrong and why he couldn't quite get the room to stop spinning and where this pain was coming from. He was nauseated but when he tried to move so he could vomit, it took him a moment to understand that he was tied to a bed, each hand and foot, spreadeagled on the mattress.

Not Ella's bedroom, though. A different room in the same house. He could smell that scent she wore, that French perfume she bought from some fancy shop back east; like attar of rose, only darker. His stomach roiled. The pain was... his shoulder. Broken, or dislocated? He couldn't tell, but being tied like this was deadly agony. A door closed. He couldn't see anyone though he tried to look, but the pain was too much and he passed out again, gladly.

This time when he woke up he felt shamed that he hadn't even wondered at Vin's whereabouts the first time. Chris could always be selfish; he hated it in himself, but he couldn't deny that it was there. Underneath the pain in his leg and left side, there was that familiar feeling of shame, worse than the physical hurts he felt now. He started when he realized that Ella was sitting in a chair next to the bed. She wore only a sleep chemise, her hair down across one shoulder.

Chris tried to lick his lips and open his mouth, but they seemed stuck closed. Ella leaned forward and offered him a small glass of water, putting it to his lips. "Here, take a little water. Only a little." He tried to drink it but coughed most of it out, and the spasms sent new pain shooting through his body.

"It's the ether," she said, as if she were talking about the weather. He was completely undone by how casual she seemed. "I didn't know how much to give you, and you insisted on struggling, so..." It was the same tone of voice she'd used on him months ago to lure him back to her place -- teasing and playful.

It took a while but finally he found his voice, croaking out, "My shoulder."

"And your ankle," Ella said in a sing-song voice. "You were a bad boy." She wagged a finger at him, but the look on her face was one of pure happiness. "My men got a little carried away, as well. You broke your ankle and then when you fought with them, your shoulder was hurt. It's probably just dislocated."

"Tying me up isn't helping." She gave him some more water and this time he was able to drink it better.

"I know. But until you promise to behave yourself, I don't feel I can be in the same room with you without a precaution. If you prove yourself, then everything will be fine."

"Prove myself?" He tested at the ropes on the good leg and arm, but they were tightly done.

"Not doing that, for one thing," she said, lightly slapping his shoulder. He gasped, instinctually pulling away, which only made it worse. She undid the rest of the buttons on his filthy shirt and slid her hand along his ribcage and stomach. "Oh, Chris, you ran away from me. I know you were just confused, it takes some time to understand such a thing. But we love each other, we belong together, and all you need is time to see that. We have the time now, you have to let go of your anger and believe me."

He turned his face away from her, toward the window. The bed faced the fireplace, and the window facing west was off to his left. He couldn't quite see out of it but knew it overlooked the wagon yard and corral. "What did you do to Vin?"

When he looked back at her, her face had changed, something dark crossing it. "What did I *do* to him?" She stood up and slammed the glass against the night table. "I didn't *do* anything that he didn't deserve!"

Obviously this was not the right tactic, Chris thought wryly. But he had no idea what the right tactic was and so could only ask, "Did you kill him?" He was filled with cold despair over the possibility of her answer. If she had killed him, he didn't even know if he could find it in himself to fight her and get free. It would be easier to just die.

"No!" she shouted at him. "No, I didn't, but I should have. Why are you even bothering with that... that hayseed? That moronic mule skinner?"

Again he turned his face away from her. If he said anything to defend Vin -- anything kind -- it would probably only provoke her further. But he couldn't stand listening to her contemptuous voice say such things about him.

Ella untied both his hands and put her shoulder under his, helping him sit up. Chris felt sick again, the room turning round and round. There was no way she would do this any other time, she knew he was still too messed up even to fight with her. She turned his chin violently toward the window and said, "There he is."

It felt like falling, as if he was lighter than air, watching the ground rush up at him as he dropped from someplace high to the hard earth beneath. *He'll die like that.* There was blood matted in Vin's hair, he could see that, but not much else. Vin's head dropped forward onto his chest. Chris shouted out, "Vin!" even though the window was open just a crack, but then from behind she hit him with something hard and heavy, and everything went blank again.

Vin started at the sound of Chris's voice, even though it was faintly heard. She must have him in the house, then. Not surprising, he supposed; she probably had a whole wedding bed made up for him. He scarcely had the strength to raise his head and look, but he somehow did. Must be the upstairs windows, one of the bedrooms. But not her room, that didn't front out on this yard. So that was why he was here -- so Chris could see him. He wondered how long he'd be left here as leverage before she killed him. Chris would never do what she asked; he might try to soothe her or fool her, but he would never really do what she asked of him and in the end, they'd both perish because of that. She would never let him go, Vin knew with chilling certainty.

The thing that hurt worst was his own failure. He'd told Chris that he would always find him. But now Vin had let Chris down. He'd lost him completely. What else was there to know but that he'd die here, miserable, having failed at the only thing he truly wanted to do. Disappointment was no stranger to him, he'd learned to live with it throughout his life and his strength in its face was what had gotten him through such a lonely existence. But disappointing another person, especially one you loved, that was too much to carry.

There was a sharp, knife-like pain in his right arm and he tried to move against the loosely tied ropes around his wrists to ease it a bit. But something was there. Ezra's contraption, he realized. When they'd tied him they hadn't noticed it. Foolish and inept. He turned his arm, crying out in pain, and pulled the sleeve of his jacket up as far as he could move it, then rubbed the slide against the rope. Even one moment of this much effort was too much, though, and his strength left him. He fell into that sleep that wasn't sleep again, wondering if he could hear Chris's voice if he called out, wondering if he could find Chris and save him.

 

This time the pain had settled into dull torment all over his body, as if what had happened to his shoulder had spread across him in a numbing wave, infecting bone and tissue and soul. Chris wasn't sure how long he could really take it. In the hall, or maybe it was from the landing or staircase, he could hear raised voices, Ella and one of those men who'd ambushed them.

Even in that wretched prison he hadn't felt quite this helpless. At best Vin would have maybe two more days if she left him like that without water or food. The sun would beat down on him all day without respite. Chris didn't understand why she had brought Vin along like this. To use against him, he supposed. So she had figured on how important Vin must be to him, but how much had she figured? "I should have," she'd said when asked if Vin had been killed. So maybe she knew more than Chris realized. If he went along with what she wanted of him, if he showed her the proper feelings, then she would have one of those men kill Vin and get him out of the way. But if he didn't behave as she wished, Vin would die anyway, slowly and in great pain. Or would she do something else, something he wasn't seeing because he couldn't quite think clearly?

The arguing stopped and as she came closer to his door, he heard her say, "Just do as I say, and everything will be all right." Then she opened the door and entered, pretty as a picture, smiling, like she was having a normal afternoon with her husband. He dully noted that the room was filled with an orange light of sunset. Was this all the same day? He didn't know anymore how long it had been.

"Where's the other fella who attacked us?" he asked as she sat next to him, arranging her petticoats and bustle.

She gave him some water, still smiling, like nothing had happened. "He did his job and now he's gone."

"How much are you paying them?"

Her eyes were glittering and hard, even though she smiled at him. It was an arrogant smile, he thought.

Chris was willfully trying to misunderstand her, she knew that. It was the way he was, though, what made her love him more than anyone else she'd ever known. His stubbornness, his pride, his sense of justice and good. He fought against it; always had. Even when he was wilder and full of youthful energy he'd had that good streak in him, wanting to do right by others. It made her heart swell with love to even think of it and how good they would be together in the future. The things they could accomplish together!

"After you left me," she said evenly, "the first time, I mean, I would meet men all the time, suitors of all kinds. They wanted me for my looks, then later they wanted my looks and my money. I was only trying to find the happiness I'd had with you. None of them measured up. It didn't matter if they were men of property from Europe, or surgeons from Philadelphia. They were dull and stupid and there was no excitement about their characters. No match was like ours, Chris, nothing ever could be. I was so disappointed."

It was clear to her that he'd made mistakes as well, that he'd stumbled through the rest of his life looking for something he'd found only with her. It mystified Ella that he couldn't see it, or didn't want to. She sighed. It was that need men had to exert control over everything, to never admit someone else could hold their heart and have power over their feelings.

"I began to realize that the only thing that mattered was that I get you back. But in the beginning, I knew I needed two things I didn't have: patience, and money. I could learn patience, and as for the money, it was easy enough to marry it. Twice. They were glad to have me. You see," she teased, "not everyone was willing to part with my charms so quickly."

"Ella, you know we agreed to go our separate ways. I didn't leave you."

"I know that's what you want to believe. It's just like a man, isn't it? To think of the woman as agreeable to his schemes, to know that we are forced to support him in anything. I thought I could live without you, and it took me only a short time to find I couldn't. I suppose it took you longer to understand that." She smiled benignly at him, hoping he would not try to misconstrue that. "By the time I had some money, you had married. So everything took just that little bit longer." She felt a silvery sense of triumph course through her body, ringing clear and bell-like inside her head.

"Everything," he repeated contemptuously. "You killed my family. You let me chase after the man who did it for years. You lied to me."

He would not ruin her triumph; no, she would not let him. "I did what I had to do. I told you, I will kill anyone who tries to come between us."

She got up and paced along the side of the room. "Who do you think Jack Averill was? Another suitor. Who do you think that man downstairs is? They will do anything for me, Chris. *Any*thing. I snap my fingers and they run. I say get me that, and they will walk to the ends of the earth to get it, if the promised reward is my affection. Fortunately, you disposed of Jack for me so I didn't have to worry over his desires. When you realize our hearts are one, I'll have what I need, and then we will be alone. Together, as we were meant to be."

Why hadn't he seen it before? She killed her husband, Chris now understood, the one in the photographs. So she'd probably killed the first one as well. All part of her plan. And had Fowler been part of her plan? He'd said a man hired him to kill Chris, not his family. Had he been lying to protect Ella? Or had it all been a mistake? Maybe she was trying to revenge herself upon him, but other things had transpired instead. Or maybe, he realized sickly, whoever had hired Fowler had given him the wrong information -- another suitor who had not wanted Ella to get her hands on Chris. He wished he had died that night; none of this would have happened. Sarah and Adam could have found a new life without him; so many other people would never have been hurt.

A crime of passion he could understand. Chris knew his own temper well enough to know how easy it was to make those mistakes. But this cold planning, this calculation and years of effort he could not begin to apprehend.

Chris pulled hard at the ropes around his good wrist, but they did not budge. She had to let him go at some point, for the outhouse or to sit up and eat. "Ella. Listen to me." He said it as softly as he could. "Let Vin go. I can't do anything in good conscience that would allow you to hurt him. He's no good to you for what you're trying to do. What will it take to make you let him go?"

He had miscalculated again, wildly. Ella turned on him with such a fury that he recoiled. "Let him go? Let him *go*? I hope he dies out there. I *saw* you! I saw you two, your tender little conversations, almost holding hands like lovers. The way he touched you and you allowed it. How sweet," she sneered at him. "And I know what you were doing all last night, both of you in that little house of yours. It's unnatural. It's sick! I won't have it." She leaned over him with her face close to his, and for a moment he thought about biting her hard, tearing off a chunk of her lovely face and spitting it out. See how she reacted to that. "I thought maybe that slattern from your pathetic town, but no, you chose to hurt me with something unnatural. With that... that mule skinner."

This time he said with frozen hatred, "What will it take to let him go?"

"Why do you care about him!" she cried, spinning around, her hands fluttering in the air. "What is he to you? *I* am something to you, he's nothing! It's despicable!"

Her back was turned to him, and he could not see her face, but she stood still like that for a long time. "What'll it take, Ella?" He couldn't bear the thought of her executing Vin because he'd done what she asked, or because he hadn't. She'd offered him no choice. Ella pulled her head high, straightened her shoulders, and stormed out of the room.

So she knew something about where he and Vin had gone in their friendship. At the beginning he had been oblivious that she didn't think much of Vin; it wasn't until later that he remembered she'd ignored him the whole time they were here, as if he didn't exist. The others she paid attention to, but now that he looked back on it he could see that she hadn't even acknowledged him when he'd spoken to her about Handsome Jack and going to Red Fork. And Vin had stayed away from her in Four Corners; he'd said that he mistrusted her intentions from the beginning, but Chris had been too blind to recognize how acute Vin's instincts were about others. Without even really knowing that he did it, Vin fixed on what was wrong with people.

With Ella's desires to elevate herself above her station in life, the way she bragged about her rich suitors, someone like Vin would be beneath her contempt even if he weren't the close friend of someone she wanted to control. Vin would represent everything that was unsophisticated and raw about this country, and he would be unimpressed by the airs she put on.

Even Chris himself had been impressed by her airs before he could see what she really was. How willfully blind had he been? He couldn't say he was ever really in love with her, but he'd loved being with her. It was rare to find a woman who delighted in such a wild life as theirs had been, a woman with some culture and education who was willing to let her hair down and snubbed her nose at propriety.

What he'd seen then as liveliness of spirit and intensity of manner -- pleasing in a woman because it was so rare -- he now knew as fierceness and cruelty and madness, and he wondered how he'd missed those signs, why he hadn't seen how easily changeable those things were. They were illusions, spun on a fine web of selfishness and deceit.

Had there been signs before, or during their time together here, that she was mad? Had he been just that arrogant and narrowly focused? Most probably. He needed people like Sarah and Vin in his life to keep him off himself, people who weren't like him in those respects. Whenever he kept company with people who were like him, that was when he got himself in the most trouble.

Only now someone else was in trouble for his blindness. He kept trying to sit up, as much as he could, to see Vin, but he wasn't able to raise himself up enough to see over the windowsill. If Vin died out there, would he know it? Ella had seemed angry enough to go right down there and kill him on her own. She had to recognize the futility of holding Vin here to make Chris behave. The only thing that would make him "prove himself" was if she let Vin go. If Vin would even consent to go, which Chris doubted, and all that would mean was that Vin would get himself killed. There was no way to win it, he realized. She had every angle covered.

The tender words Vin had spoken to him at his property, their night together, was all he had to hold on to. And he had to hold on, as hard as he could, because it all depended on him.

 

When Vin woke it was dark and there was a figure standing above him, kicking his thigh with a heavy boot toe. He jerked away and looked up, blind and dizzy with the effort. It was the big man, the one who'd hit him first.

"What?" he asked listlessly. He had no strength left; even if the man was here to kill him, he had no ability to fight him off. But he had to get some strength back if he was to help Chris.

"Seein' if you was alive."

"Why bother?"

"The lady wants you to be alive." The man turned away.

Vin called after him, "I gotta piss. And you give me some water I'll last longer, for whatever reasons she's got me here."

"Piss on yourself then. You ain't getting any help." He faded into the darkness. Vin breathed in as much as he could, but his ribs ached and his shoulders were stiffened into position by the pain and stress of being tied back. Vin remembered the gun slide and started moving it back and forth against the rope again. It would be a long, long job, and he wasn't sure he could keep up his strength to do it.

He'd heard shouting intermittently, occasionally a man, mostly Ella. It filtered through his mind like a drifting curtain, and he hadn't registered what the words really were. Once or twice he'd heard what he thought was Chris's voice, but since the one time he'd heard him shout his name, there had been little that let him know for certain if Chris was okay.

Vin had never thought of himself as having a wild imagination, he left that to folks like Ezra and JD, but his mind ran crazy with thoughts of what Ella could do to Chris in punishment for having rejected her. And if Chris continued to reject her now, there was little telling what she would do. Would she continue to use others against him, or would she turn her madness on him instead, and decide that no one could have him if she couldn't? Vin didn't know her well enough to know what she was capable of. Her madness had been a surprise to all of them, really.

The silence of the night echoed the sounds around him -- the heavy breathing of the horses in the corral behind, the crickets in the wood, wind through leaves in the trees nearby. Bats flapped from those trees, their shadows cutting across the night sky, silhouetted against a fingernail moon. He'd promised to always find Chris, told Chris that he could never be lost again, in spirit or in body. And he was now lost in both. Vin had let him get lost.

Chris never cared when people saw him show feelings. If he cried or despaired, it was meaningless to him that someone would see it. He bestowed his good opinion on few people and what most thought of him played no part in his life at all. Vin had rarely felt himself moved to the kind of feeling that would make him cry, but right now he could feel it edging at his throat and eyes. Chris had put so much faith and understanding in Vin's abilities, and all he had done was prove him wrong for having that faith.

He'd been bitten over and over by ants during the day, not to mention the flies, and his body was aflame from it all. Somehow he felt worse inside, though. He continued to hack away at the rope for as long as he could, swallowing his pain, until he couldn't take it anymore.

Chris lay awake that night wondering where she had gone, listening to the sounds outside, hoping to hear something of Vin. He thought at one point he had heard two voices, one of them maybe Vin's, but it had been too brief and he was in such a dull state that he couldn't tell what was happening at this point.

He drifted in and out of sleep, the pain of his arms being tied up above him too great to allow him much rest. In the morning Ella came into the room with food and some water. She still seemed angry with him, though.

"I won't try to escape if you untie me. I have to piss, at least. And it would make feeding me an easier job."

Ella gazed calmly at him, sizing up his statement. "Arthur will help you," she said and turned on her heel to walk out.

The big man came in, the one who'd hit Vin. He undid the ropes and kept a gun on Chris while he got up with agonizing difficulty. All he would do was point at the chamberpot under the bed; that was as far as his help would go, clearly.

Playing nursemaid to these two was not what Arthur had planned. When he'd met Ella the first time and she'd bought those horses from him, he'd been utterly enchanted with her. The second time she came to him, in distress at having been chased off her land, he wanted to do whatever it would take to right the wrongs and get back at those men who'd hurt her so much. The promise of her favors, the lure of having a woman so successful was a strong motivation, of course, but he wanted to help her regardless. Assisting someone with their bodily functions hadn't entered into his picture of what this bargain was for.

Chris didn't feel the better for it when he was done. His ankle by now was hideously swollen and the entire upper half of his chest, shoulder, and arm were completely numb. When he was unceremoniously tossed back on the bed by Arthur, whoever he was, shock waves of pain rang through him. Maybe it was his collarbone. Or maybe it was the shoulder, he couldn't tell anymore. What did it matter, anyway? He'd probably die here. This time Arthur tied his feet and only the one good arm, leaving the lifeless arm alone. Ella must have told him to do that; Chris tried to muster a feeling of gratitude for it, but there was none to find. The arm was useless anyway, he couldn't bring it over far enough to untie himself or hurt anyone. But he was sitting up more, the feather pillows behind him. He still couldn't see anything out the window, the angle was wrong, but sitting up just this little bit was better.

When she returned Ella began feeding him the eggs and bacon on the plate, little bits at a time. "It will make you sick to eat much after all this." All this that she'd inflicted on him.

They neither of them talked while he ate and she gave him small sips of water. He watched her face carefully, though, for signs of something, anything, that would giver her intentions away. She showed nothing while focusing on her task. In a way, that was something, Chris thought. She was playing the dutiful lover, the kind and attentive woman. Not her normal state and certainly not something she had ever excelled at.

After he was finished she continued to sit with him, not saying anything. "If I promise to stay with you, if I marry you, will you let him go? *Really* let him go?" Chris asked in a rasping, weary voice.

Ella was affronted. "We're already married. You've always been mine." How much did she have to suffer for Chris's stubborn need to go his own way? It was a test of some kind, a way for him to get proof of her love and loyalty. Yes, it was a test. "I won't let him hurt our happiness, Chris. If I let him go, he'd try to do that. He's jealous and untrustworthy. I know you were close friends, but the time for friendships like that is over. We are each other's lives now." She smoothed her hand over his forehead, brushing back his hair.

So that was how he would have to play it. "But I owe him something, Ella. He's seen me through a lot of scrapes. It would make me more content to stay here with you if you let him go unharmed."

She erupted at that. "How foolish do you think I am? He's dangerous. Dangerous to you and to me, to everything that we have!" Ella knocked the tray across the bed and threw the glass against the wall. Chris had never seen her like this, ever. Even at the end when he'd found out what she'd done, she hadn't been this mad. "I told you. I'll kill anyone who comes between us."

"And what if it's me? What if I'm the one who comes between us?"

She had no answer for that. What was he asking her this for? Was he trying to trick her, to make her so angry she'd do something foolish? He'd been blinded by these people for so long -- first that cow of a wife, then these shiftless men he worked with, most of all that idiot out in her wagon yard.

She must calm herself or it would be easy to lose Chris. He never had responded to people challenging him, and he wouldn't be any more likely to respond well now just because she had him here like this. Ella took a deep breath, trying to focus on what he was talking about, what other shadings his words could have.

It was such a betrayal of her love if he wouldn't stop worrying about that idiot friend of his. As if he was trying to slap her in the face. But then, she thought, maybe that's why he did it. To provoke her and make her love stronger, not because he really felt anything for Vin.

From the moment she'd met Vin she hadn't liked him. There was something about the easy familiarity with Chris she disliked, the same thing she'd seen in Buck Wilmington, as well, though Buck was charming and fun. They both were too close to Chris, though Vin, she'd thought, acted like he owned Chris. The fact that he hardly spoke except to Chris only confirmed it for her.

Finally she stopped pacing the room and stood watching out the window. If she just killed the man, then he'd not be a threat to their happiness. But what if Chris misunderstood again? As long as Vin was alive, she *might* be able to make Chris see the reason in all this. He'd always cherished the notion of helping people in need, so she could see him being more willing to hear her entreaties if there was someone to be helped. On the other hand, at this rate, Vin wouldn't last much longer. Ah well, Ella reasoned, nothing to be done. Once you chose a path, you stayed on it.

She turned to Chris. "I know you just need to worry about others, and you're concerned. But I didn't bring you here to think about anyone else. I brought you here so you could think about us. So we could be together as we should."

"Brought me here?" Chris repeated with a bitter laugh. "You broke my leg and my shoulder, and knocked me out and tied me to a bed. I'd say that's a step beyond brought."

She looked hard at him. "I have things to do. I'll leave you to think about it. It's up to you, Chris. You know how much I love you and I know how much you love me. You're just blinded by your soft-heartedness. If you think about it, you'll come around to what needs to be done."

The only thing Chris could even think about was the pain he was in, and how much Vin would be suffering by now. Two days of being out there now. If he lived long enough to see a third, he would be destroyed. Vin must be so very disappointed in him for allowing it all to come to this. Chris's mind was so addled that everything ran together -- Vin's tender words to him; Ella's voice saying, "I'll kill anyone who comes between us;" Vin muttering, "You should have shot her when you had the chance;" the sound of pleasure Vin had made those few nights before. The muddled way they blurred made him more ill than the pain.

What was she doing now? Removing Vin from the situation by killing him? He could only imagine her rage and it streamed a cold terror through his heart. The pain exhausted him so that these conversations with Ella, punctuated by her unpredictable rages and the anxiety of trying to figure out which way she'd react, only tired him that much more and he couldn't think. He found himself drifting off into that sleep again, filled with darkly rendered dreams that scratched at the back of his brain like a caged animal. Fire, and Vin, and death, all of which flowed in black and red.

In her back room Ella sat on the floor holding Chris's gun, looking at the other things of his that surrounded her. Some items were missing; she'd been able to tell right away when she'd come back to the house. It preyed on her mind that someone had violated this special place, had removed those mementos she held so dear for so long. She was sure it was Vin, and it made her more determined than ever to see him suffer.

In her mind this had all gone perfectly, just as she'd planned it out. Ella had known that it would only take Chris a short time to overcome his pride, to stop being angry and remember how much they meant to one another. Nothing could have prepared her for that unnatural friendship between Chris and Vin. Chris had never been like anyone else, he lived by his own rules, but this was far beyond anything she'd expected from him. Ella picked up one of the pictures she had of Chris, made when they were first together in those wild times, and ran her fingers across it lovingly.

Everything had been so perfect then, but she hadn't realized it at the time. All the other men were the same -- they wanted something from you, sexual favors or your submission and devotion. Chris had never expected any of that. The act of love had carried no strings with him, he took only what he wanted and what she'd been willing to give. They were perfectly matched in that respect, and they lived life so fully, so equally passionately. Why was it so that you only knew how much you had after it was taken from you? If she'd only discovered at the time how truly, perfectly matched they were, that their love was eternal, she could never have let him go. He'd thought he needed to go and she was so focused on her desire for money and position that she'd let him, only to find out what pale imitations all men were in the face of his memory.

Even after the sun had gone low in the sky, Ella sat there, lost in the memory of those times, until she heard a knock at the door. She was bored by Arthur now, his expectations were just like the rest of the men she'd known all her life. Once he'd done everything she asked of him, he would expect her to submit to his sexual desires, become the dutiful, pretty woman he could carry along on his arm. It was so banal and it wearied her, thinking of men like him, when the only true man she'd ever known was here, stubbornly refusing to prove himself to her.

Her looks had not faded yet, nor her powers of attraction. She could easily addle the minds of idiots like Jack Averill and Arthur Hunt with her promises and her suggestions, but in the end, her contempt for them only made Ella realize how much more she needed Chris, how suited for one another they were. He was never beguiled by her or some false idea of her, he was in love only with her true self. He *had* to remember that, to come back around to it again.

Ella ignored the knocking until she heard Arthur's footsteps fade away on the landing. Maybe he'd get angry enough to do something rash. She certainly wouldn't stop him if he did. As she put the items that had been scattered on the floor back on their shelves, she understood now why she'd failed. Chris simply needed to remember how they really were together, how suited. The power of physical enticement. That was all it took, really, for most men; why not for Chris as well?

 

Buck looked up at the big clock on the wall and then back at Ezra, who was dealing a new hand. JD and Josiah were eyeing their cards with caution.

"Am I the only one of us who's even got the slightest interest in the fact that Chris and Vin are still gone?" He sipped at his beer and wiped the foam off his moustache.

"Well, I think that answer would be no, Buck," Josiah said, taking a card out and dropping it on the table. "I'm a little suspicious, too."

"Well, then, why in blazes haven't you said anything?" Buck asked crossly.

"Don't rightly know," was all Josiah would answer, which just annoyed Buck. He waited. "I suppose I've been busy and all. Now that we're taking some time to ourselves for the first time in days, I'm starting to notice all the little things that have gone amiss."

"Two of our own seems like a bit more than amiss." Buck dropped his cards on the table. "If they're not back by nightfall then we're riding before dawn tomorrow and we're going to find them. Every time I turn around we're sitting here playing poker, and we're nothing but a bunch of useless--"

"Maybe they're just taking their time with whatever Chris needed to do," JD offered helpfully, but Buck only squinted at him, annoyed with both the thought and the interruption. "Or maybe they're just back at his place fixing all the stuff he wrecked."

"I wouldn't put it past Chris to just take off and lick his wounds, but it ain't like Vin at all to disappear for days and not tell anyone. No, sir."

"And don't forget the last time Chris disappeared with no word," Josiah said conversationally, which only served to make Buck more excited.

"Exactly!" He couldn't understand why they hadn't been more worried and acted as though they'd only just now grasped the fact that something might be odd in this situation. Given the state of things after such a fire with all the people looking for trouble out there, that alone was enough to make him worried. It wasn't that Buck didn't think of Chris and Vin as the most competent of men, but things were not even the least bit normal right now, and you threw a jealous lover into the balance, why then, things were more worrisome indeed.

Ezra looked at both of them, then back at his cards and made his bet. "Now, I'm not much for the superstitious mind, but I must admit that Mr. Tanner's nerves were starting to create a certain discomfiture even in myself. So I'm inclined to believe that maybe nerves are called for in this case."

They continued their poker game despite Buck's squirming and fussing, the first time they'd all had a chance to stop and talk and drink at the same time. Although there'd been little pleasure in it for anyone because of his constant grousing.

When almost everyone else had finally gone to bed, Ezra still sat in the saloon for another game with Nathan. But most folks were just too tired out to stay up all night gambling and drinking. Progress was being made, most definitely, but it would be a long time before Ezra found himself suitable companions much past sundown. Nathan quietly kept him company for a bit, the two of them only speaking to make bets or call for cards, but after midnight even he was ready to leave, and he'd never been one for cards, anyway.

"We best get on to bed if we're going out looking for Chris and Vin," he said to Ezra.

Ezra sighed theatrically. "Very true. And there is nothing happening here, anyway, so it won't be as if a short adventure isn't welcome."

"Why you acting all down at the mouth?" Nathan asked him. "Can't be that bad to not stay up all night cheating people out of their hard-earned money."

Ezra gave him a scowl. "A number of those people would have additional largesse to squander at the gaming tables if they would just *take* the money we've so graciously offered them."

"You still having trouble giving that money away?" Nathan laughed.

"I have never in all my days met so many obstreperously independent people. I must practically grovel to convince them to take so much as a few paltry dimes for a sack of flour, and even then, half of them won't take that. I've tried every tactic I can conceive of: enlisting Mary's aid, having you give it to the people you treat, and Buck's jovial, contrived visits. I am, so far, unencumbered of precisely one-third of that money. When we first stumbled on it in Stutz's room, we nearly lost our lives trying to protect it from the greedy citizenry of this entire territory. Now I couldn't throw it from the roof of the bank and have one person pick it up."

Nathan was laughing so hard that he held his sides.

"I fail to see the humor in this." Ezra glared at him. Nathan always found anything to do with money in Ezra's hands far too hilarious for his tastes.

"Naw, naw. You wouldn't." He wiped at his eyes. "I'm thinking maybe Chris knew just how stubborn and reluctant to have help these folks'd be, and that's why he put you in charge of it. Forcing you to do a good deed to folks who don't want no charity. Just to get under your skin."

But that clicked something in Ezra's mind. Charity. That was the problem. No one out here would ever want charity, and no matter how much they had presented it as a town rebuilding fund, as something due the citizens in order to keep things running, people out here would see it as charity. The same beliefs that led these poor benighted souls into something like dirt farming or cattle ranching in a desert, Ezra reasoned, would make them view any assistance as charity, or consider it as the seven being high and mighty -- implying that they were incapable of taking care of themselves. Of course.

"You may have inadvertently assisted me," Ezra said. "I think this may just be a job for Josiah and his God. After all, wouldn't charity best come from a man of the cloth? And doesn't it say in the Bible, 'And above all things have fervent charity among yourselves: for charity shall cover the multitude of sins,' hm?"

Nathan looked at him as if he'd grown three heads. "That's from the book of Peter," Nathan said, looking at him even more queerly.

No matter, Ezra now knew how to get rid of that money in time for Chris's arrival so he wouldn't have to listen to any hastily made accusations of malfeasance. That is, assuming they were able to find Chris, at all, something that still nagged at the back of his mind. Ezra kept thinking of Vin's worry, the way he'd acted when he'd left. What if there really had been something else going on?

In the morning Buck had roused Nathan and Ezra before dawn to ride out with him, asking JD and Josiah to stay with the judge and help out the town. They rode out, sleepy and hungry, under the lightening sky, toward Chris's place.

When they got there, still early, it was eerily silent. Buck dismounted, surveying the damage around them. It looked like someone had had a fight on the porch, because one of the areas Vin and Chris had repaired at the time of his last visit was messed up again. He peered inside the house, but nothing was amiss. The bedclothes were rumpled and he saw Vin's hat and Winchester on the floor near the table; Chris's hat was on the floor near a chair, but his rig was missing. Right there, Buck was afraid something was seriously wrong. They'd never have left without their hats and Vin's gun.

Nathan and Ezra had walked around to the other side of the little building and Ezra's attention was immediately caught by the sight of blood on the ground. He called the other two over, and just as he stood up, he noticed the white handkerchief, caught in the center of a bush. "I think we have trouble at hand," Ezra said quietly. "And I think I know where it is."

 

At least one part of the ropes around Vin's wrists was now thoroughly cut, and if he could fray the other side, he could free his hands. But the work was so difficult; he wasn't certain anymore if he could really do it. From time to time he simply blanked out, staring off into the distance, completely mindless. His brain felt on fire, the heat of the sun beating down on him and no water had left him so fevered and weak now that he didn't think he could last through another noon.

Unexpectedly he saw a blur of white in his side vision and looked up to see her standing above him in the twilight darkness. She stared at him, not saying a word, and then kicked at his leg, as if testing to see whether he was still alive or not. Then she pulled out a white handkerchief from a pocket within her skirt, set it afire, and dropped it on his lap. He looked down at it, then up at her, blinking, and suddenly she was gone. He shook his head, not even certain if it was an hallucination. A while ago he'd stopped sweating in the heat. It was the worst sign when you couldn't even sweat any more; he couldn't go on like this much longer. At this point he didn't even know if he was awake or asleep. When he looked up at the window above he could see the lamp had been turned up, and Vin leaned his head back against the post, not wanting to think too much of what was going on up there.

Chris had waited most of the afternoon and evening for Ella to come back. His anxiety worsened the longer she was away; he couldn't imagine her staying away from him this long when the anticipation of having him back would be too exciting. He could hear Arthur moving around; at one point it even seemed as if he was looking for her, but Chris wasn't totally certain what was going on. His stomach clenched in fear for Vin's life, overriding even the pain of his swollen ankle and wrecked shoulder.

It was long after midnight when she came into the room wearing only her sleep chemise again, her hair down. She turned up the lamp and sat on the edge of the bed, smiling at him, but the look in her eyes was horrible -- dead, cold. As if every hint of normalcy had finally left her. In her hand was one of his cheroots; he couldn't imagine when she had picked that up. Another of her "souvenirs" of special times, he assumed. "Would you like to smoke?" Ella asked him.

"Can't keep it for a memento if I do."

She laughed coldly. "No, I suppose not." Putting the cigar on the night table, she leaned forward to kiss Chris on the mouth, running her hand along his chest. He didn't respond to her, turning his face away from the kiss, but she persevered, moving her body alongside his. The bed's movement dragged his side down and pulled the rope tight along his bad ankle, and he pulled in a hard breath, but it was as if she didn't hear him. Maybe she couldn't anymore, he thought.

Everything Ella did was the same as before, she knew his body intimately and Chris had let her know what he liked, what he responded to. But nothing she could do now would evoke the response she wanted. Still, she persisted. When she unzipped his trousers, moving her hand inside and straddling him, she stopped. The gown was hiked up above her thighs, a view that before would have made him wild with passion.

Ella clambered off of him. She stood next to the bed, shaking with rage. "So now you prefer perversion over our love?" Her voice was as cold and rough as a February wind. Before he'd always liked her throaty voice.

"It's got nothing to do with that, Ella," he said sadly, his face turned to the window. "How could you think I'd want you when you have me trussed up like this? I'm not some stallion meant to perform on command."

Picking up a Lucifer match from the table, Ella lit the cheroot and inhaled it a few times, trying to calm her shaking. She stared at the match in her fingers as it burned down. Didn't he understand this? Why was he refusing everything she offered him? Just because of that fool outside at her corral. No one understood her like Chris, ever, and here he was trying to upset her and confuse her by pretending he didn't know. He couldn't be like all the rest, couldn't only want the same things from her as they all had. No. She would not let him discompose her like this. Distress her. Disconcert. She laughed to herself. Dis-ease.

The match burned itself out against her fingertips, the pain lancing her skin. She stared at the smoke curling up from it and from the tip of the cigar. He would understand. She'd make him. Ella knew this: She was Joan of Arc, sainted and pure. She would be married to Chris in smoke and flame, consumed by the fire that flowed inside her. It had claimed her now, like God's voice had claimed Joan. Chris would walk inside the purging fire with her and they would burn together through this world, bride and groom. Consecrated at last.

Ella dropped the match onto Chris's chest and he bellowed in pain, trying to pick it off but he could not move his lifeless arm up to do it. The match slowly burned itself out, the smell of burnt skin overpowering even the smell of the oil lamp. She watched him quizzically, wondering if he understood now. Fire was her friend. It had helped her when Fowler had burned Chris's old place away, it had helped her when Jack Averill had burned out all those people to create her story for Chris, and it would help her now. She dropped another match on the soft skin inside his arm and he sucked in air through his gritted teeth, glaring hostilely at her.

People never wanted to believe you were doing these things for their own good. They always fought you, the way the church fought Joan all those centuries ago. They didn't want to understand.

"Stop it, Ella!" Chris yelled at her, but it was as if she couldn't hear him, she seemed to move like something mechanical, staring blankly at the damage she was inflicting. "This is me! If you love me, you can't do this!" She blinked at him and then took the cigar and ground it hard into the center of his stomach, letting it smolder on his skin. He didn't know which was worse, the pain or the smell of his own skin being burned.

And then she did it again, and again, and no entreaties or hollering or smooth-talking words would make her stop, until he completely passed out. When he came around, it was growing faintly lighter with dawn approaching. The pain all around his chest and neck and stomach was too much to bear, it hurt to breathe, to not breathe. He could hear her talking to Arthur again.

"Kill him. He's worthless to me now." She glared at Arthur, sick of his presence already. "Just go out there and get the job done."

Arthur watched her momentarily, staring at her with his dumb cow's eyes, and turned away, walking down the stairs.

Unholstering the gun that he still was unused to carrying, he went outside to the man -- he didn't even know the fellow's name -- and stood there, looking at him.

Arthur hesitated. Executing helpless people wasn't what he'd had in mind when Ella had asked him for his help. He wasn't a clever man, but he was beginning to understand that there was a lot more here than simple revenge. Oh sure, he could believe it about this fellow, the hunter or tracker or whatever he was, but the other one in the bedroom... No one would tie someone to a bed like that, torment him like that, because he'd taken their land. And Ella was dressed in only her sleep chemise. A gunfight was one thing, that he didn't have so many scruples about, but this execution -- well, murder was different. He turned and looked back at the window, as if she would signal to him to come back in, everything would be fine.

When she came back in to Chris's room she had his rig in her hands. Still undressed, her hair wild and uncombed, like she'd completely stopped trying to make any pretence of being normal.

She tossed the belt on the bed and pulled the gun out, spun the cylinder round and round; mesmerized by its motion, Chris thought. It was so tempting to just ask her to shoot him and put him out of all this misery. He still clung to the ridiculous belief that he could save Vin's life, but at this point, he just wanted out.

Her gaze was distracted. She looked off to the side, her head turned delicately away, looking for all the world like a woman posing for her portrait. "I told you I'd kill anyone who tried to stand between us. But if I can't have you, Chris, I'm not sure I want anyone to have you."

From below the report of two gunshots echoed, and Chris jolted, his eyes wide with fear. It seemed to knock Ella back into the present, though, and she reached over and untied his other hand, then his feet. The brush of her hair over his burns was excruciating. She pulled him up to sit, and pointed out the window. Vin was gone. There was a trail of blood, clearly visible against the pale brown dirt, that moved from where he'd been tied toward the direction of the barn.

 

Vin can hear movement in the house even though it isn't dawn yet. He's gotten the ropes around his wrists undone by using the slide, and is trying to work the ones around his body when he drops off to sleep again, exhausted by his efforts. He hears screaming then, he thinks, but isn't certain if he is having bad dreams or hallucinations or if this is all real. Nothing seems real anymore, even when he is certain he is awake and working on the ropes. Everything is heightened -- his pain sharper, the colors so intense but pushed to a brilliant, harsh light, the sounds louder and less distinct.

He knocks his arm hard against the post, not even sure if the slide will work, but the gun shoots forward into his hand, although awkwardly, more fitted for Ezra than for him. Or maybe it doesn't, maybe he is dreaming this. He isn't even sure he will get a chance to use it, but he has two shots, at least. He can feel something warm and sticky alongside the gun, which is cool and smooth. Blood, he thinks, it must be blood from the ropes. So along with everything else he will be picking rope fibers out of his wounds, hoping to stave off infection. If it's real, which it may not be, anyway.

Without any sound, in the darkness, the big man suddenly appears in front of him, a gun leveled at his head. Is it real? Vin wonders. Maybe when you reach this stage, you dream that someone kills you, because your mind and your body want that release so badly. Maybe this is the spirit guide in some farcical version of death who will take him to the Land of Souls. He used to think he didn't believe in heaven, but now he has to believe there's a hell, so there must be a heaven. Because there's got to be some kind of eternal punishment for someone like Ella, there simply must be. He used to think he was damned, too, but now he thinks that his sins are not unpardonable, not compared to this.

Vin sees the man hesitate and in that moment decides this is real enough to shoot. He draws his arm forward fast and fires directly into the man's gut, twice, and he goes down nearly in a heap on top of Vin, who leans sideways quickly to avoid it. A spray of blood and tissue covers his face even as he turns away, and it soaks into his already fouled clothing. Everything moves quickly and at once very slowly, which adds to the feeling of madness.

Vin pulls at the ropes and quickly stands up, almost as if by instinct, but that doesn't last long as his legs wobble out from beneath him and he falls over, desperately grasping at the railings. He has to get himself together if he is to be of any use to Chris, but he's never felt like this, so utterly weak and exhausted. Sweat covers his head like a cap. Now he knows it's not a dream, he knows it's real because he cannot stand, can hardly feel his arms and legs, can scarcely swallow. His eyes are full of stinging tears as his own body tries to wash the blood out. Tears of blood, he thinks, and marvels that his body has enough water in it left to form tears.

Pulling himself up and grabbing at what little store of energy he has, Vin pulls the dead man away as quickly as he can, hoping she isn't watching this and that he can get inside the house all right. And that Chris is still alive. If he has not done what she wants, there is no telling what Ella will think of to do to Chris. It would be better if this were a nightmare, Vin believes. At least he could wake up at the end of it. He staggers toward the bunkhouse, carrying what little light of hope he has inside him.

 

Chris stared out the window, his shoulders sagging with the weight of this knowledge. Eventually he looked at Ella. "What else do you want, Ella? I won't be who you want me to be, and this..." He tried to take a deep breath, but he couldn't get his body to stop shuddering so he could take in any air.

She pointed the gun at his temple and drew back the hammer. "I won't let anyone else have what I can't," she said quietly. Chris didn't even bother to flinch or to move away in fear, which disappointed her and she drew the gun away. Then she pointed it at her own head and pulled the trigger, saying, "This is how much I love you," and it fired dry, the chamber empty. "Let's play a game," she whispered to him seductively, leaning up to kiss at his throat. "Show me how much you love me, show me how far you're willing to go for me."

"You think you can play this game with me?" he sneered at her. "You think I care enough to play this?" He grabbed at the gun and tore it out of her hand, spinning the cylinder around and around and pointing it at his head. Looking out the window, his face showing only despair, he pulled the trigger once, twice. Ella screamed and flung herself at him on the second pull, grabbing at the gun and getting the soft web of skin between thumb and forefinger pinched under the hammer, which made her shriek even louder.

Ella tried to tear the gun away from him, realizing how terribly she'd failed, when he yanked it back out of her hand. He was laughing at her, she could see it in his eyes.

"You think this would work on me now? That this is some kind of trick? I'll tell you what the trick is, Ella." He pointed the gun at her chest and her eyes went wide in terror. "It's not to give a damn. And you've seen to it that I don't."

He pulled the trigger, and this time it met the bullet. It fired, hitting her in the chest, knocking her backwards. Her eyes were so wide and round. For a moment he thought they seemed almost tender, as if she'd wanted him to do this to her. She fell to the floor, the deep red of her blood -- almost black -- spreading across her chemise. Chris stood above her watching the life go out of her eyes. Ella's lips moved and he leaned as close as he could to hear what she said. All it sounded like was, "You love me," but he couldn't be certain. Her left hand fell open, the palm empty, as if offering up something to him. Offering him her life. But he did not want it. Then she was truly gone.

The first thing Vin did was find water, then drink until he gagged and heaved it all back up. His face felt raw from the sun that had burned down on him, the dried blood stung and itched at his skin and the bites were so swollen and red. He stank so bad he might be able to kill someone just by walking past them. He splashed some water to wash off the blood, drank a little more, and took the man's gun, checking the chambers. Vin riffled his pockets for more bullets, but there was only the five in the chambers. That would have to be enough. His lungs stretched to take in air.

Keeping low to the ground, he made it to the house with a huge effort, his breath rattling in his lungs. He would end up with the fever from this, he knew, if he even got out of here. Just as he was opening the door carefully he heard one single gunshot from upstairs and his heart froze in his chest. What if she'd seen him escape and killed Chris? Both Chris and Ezra had told him they thought he never felt fear, and this was proof of how wrong they were. A cold steel fist gripped his heart, squeezing every bit of hope or courage out. Throwing caution to the wind, he ran inside as best he could, limping badly, cocking the forty-five.

When he was satisfied that Ella was dead, Chris turned away and tried his best to hobble out. He was so weak from the pain that he could scarcely stand, and the ankle refused to hold him. Nearly falling on the bed, he grabbed his gunbelt and threw it over his shoulder, flinching at the friction against the burns. Careening to the door, then lurching down the hall, he came to the landing, knowing he couldn't even try to walk down those stairs. He wasn't completely certain he wanted to leave; what was the point? He could just sit down here and blow his brains out. It wasn't like he had anything to live for anymore. There was a point a person could not go beyond, their heart simply wouldn't take it, and he'd passed that point a few moments ago. He had turned into a dry husk of something resembling a person, a wispy shell of skin that would crumble away under a breeze.

Everything that had led him here, all the mistakes, his sins coming back to haunt him, hung on him with such weight he could not breathe. Chris wanted to weep for his friend, but he couldn't even muster the strength to do that. From below the landing he heard movement and realized that Arthur would still be here, most likely drawn by the gunshot. She'd left only one bullet in the gun and obviously that had been fired, so he searched for the bullets in his belt, fumbling as he tried to hold everything in one hand.

Vin started toward the stairs when he saw Chris there, desperately trying to load his gun. He was filled with such a surge of relief and happiness that he almost cried out, but instead gulped in air and said, quietly, "Hey, cowboy. You don't want to be shooting me by accident, do you?"

Chris's head snapped up and he stared at Vin, so surprised and so happy that he nearly tumbled down the stairs. He grabbed the railing and righted himself. "I thought you were dead." Then he noticed the small Derringer of Ezra's jutting out of Vin's sleeve. "Only you look like you're not much more'n that," Chris said in a hoarse whisper, but he could not stop smiling like an idiot.

"Well, you ain't exactly a picture yourself," Vin replied in his shaking voice, amused at being able to say that to Chris this time. But he could see Chris start to fall as his leg gave out beneath him, and Vin ran up the stairs to help him, all thoughts of his own pain vanishing like fog after sun.


	5. This, and Only This

 

> **Your willow heart, always bending to the point of breaking.**
> 
> _N.M. Kelby_

 

Chris nearly hit the steps before Vin got to him. He hadn't felt this bad since that time in prison, and the ghosted memory of that pain and helplessness came to him, the dread sinking into his bones. How much could his body really take, so many torturous events after another? How long before he couldn't save himself, or someone save him? Vin had come to find him then; Vin had come to find him now.

As Vin caught him and helped him hobble down the stairs, his heart was finally willing to confirm something it hadn't fully accepted before -- that he could never be lost again. He let Vin pull him close, the husk he had become collapsing in Vin's arms.

Chris turned to him --Vin's face was blistered and burnt, streaked with blood and marked by insect bites, and underneath those wounds there was a huge swelling on his forehead from where he'd been hit. It looked like his jaw was swollen too, which filled Chris with despair over what he'd been through. All because of him, because of his mistakes.

When they reached the bottom of the stairs, Vin steered Chris over to the settee and sat beside him, looking him over. He couldn't find his voice; not because of thirst or pain, but because he saw Chris's wounds and there was nothing he could do but choke on his rage and hopelessness. "What did she do to you?" he whispered. "My God. What did she do?" He gently pulled Chris's shirt over his chest, not even attempting to button it.

Chris didn't speak, just leaned back and closed his eyes. But he put his hand on Vin's arm.

"We best get out of here and get you to Nathan." Vin smoothed Chris's hair back. Then he lost what little composure he had and choked out, "I can't believe I let this happen!"

"Not your fault," Chris said slowly. "You found me. Even if I hadn't got away, you'd have come for me." He gave his best attempt at a smile, but knew he was failing miserably.

"Can you walk? Your ankle's wrecked, ain't it? And your arm?"

"Shoulder. Can't tell if it's broken or dislocated."

"We need Nathan," Vin repeated.

"Yup." Chris tried to rise but stumbled, and Vin put his hands under Chris's arm and gently assisted him. They walked out the door toward the corral, but then Vin stopped and said, "Wait. The carriage." It was still in the wagon yard; they must have brought Chris here in it and left it when they returned from his place. He helped Chris into the back and tucked a seat blanket over him kindly, and said, "Just stay here, I'll get the horses." He didn't know how much longer he could last himself, his legs trembled with every step, but he had to stay strong for Chris. He slowly brought two horses over and hitched them up as best he could, then climbed into the seat with great difficulty. Just as the carriage started rolling forward, Vin abruptly stopped it.

From behind him, Chris mumbled something as he stopped. All Vin said was, "Wait. There's something I need to do." He got down and limped over to the house, where inside he took some matches, then stepped back outside on the porch. Along the walls hung fancy fuel lamps, and Vin pulled hard with every ounce of strength he had left, ripping a couple from the woodwork. He smashed the lamps against the floorboards, trailing a bit of the kerosene away from the step. Then he took a deep breath and lit a few matches, dropping them onto the kerosene puddles. They flared up and he dashed back to the carriage as fast he could in his condition, snapping the traces as he raced them away from the house. One last look over his shoulder told him that the fire was spreading along the wall and soon would take over the whole house.

Chris didn't object. He lay quietly in the seat watching what Vin was doing, satisfied. Vin hadn't even asked him if Ella was dead; he just assumed that if Chris was there, Ella was gone. And this was enough for Chris, now, to have everything about her purged from his life. Fire was fear, fire was loss and tragedy and suffering; but now, at last, fire was cleansing.

As they cleared the hill and the soft breeze carried the smoke above the property, Vin heard horses approaching them. He pulled out the revolver, but knew that he was hopelessly under-armed right now. Through the trees he recognized a familiar color, though -- the legs of Buck's big grey, and then he saw Buck, who rode fast toward him.

"Oh, thank God," Buck shouted at him as he reined hard to a stop. Ezra and Nathan rode up right behind Buck. "We saw the smoke." Buck needn't finish his thought; they all knew what his first notion had been.

"Chris is in real bad shape, Nathan," Vin said, motioning at his friend. "Burns, broken bones."

Nathan had hurriedly dismounted and was already clambering into the carriage while Chris was trying to wave him off. "Oh, my..." Nathan trailed off, looking up at Vin with horrified eyes. He gave Chris some water from his canteen and said quietly to Vin, "I don't have what I need. Let's get him home. Now." As Nathan got out of the carriage, he grabbed Vin's arm. "You ain't much better. You go on now, get in the back." Nathan nodded to Ezra, who dismounted and tied his horse to the back of the carriage, then got in the seat being vacated by Vin.

Nathan helped Vin in and gave him their canteens, before getting back on his own horse. Buck was watching them anxiously, unable to speak, overwhelmed by the circumstances they'd found Chris and Vin in. "Let's go, as fast as we can," he said, and spurred his horse.

Vin leaned against Chris, wrapping the blanket more tightly around him. He said to Ezra's back, "I'm sorry. I had to do it. Guess I ruined your plans."

Ezra turned to him as the carriage jolted forward. "On the contrary, my friend. If you hadn't done it, I'd have done it myself." Vin sat back and concentrated his attention on Chris, preparing for the long ride back.

 

Waking in the early evening the next day, Vin looked around his room, completely confused by his location for a moment, fear seizing him by the throat. Where was he, and where was Chris? It took him a few moments before he could calm down to realize he was safe at home, and Chris was at Nathan's being taken care of.

He felt as though he would be thirsty for days. His lips were still cracked and scabbed, and the bites and sunburn had left him feeling like a piece of rancid meat, but all those things would heal in time. After he got up, he dressed and drank down the entire pitcher of water they'd left for him on the chest in the corner. He sat down for a while, all done in just from that much activity. Presently, he got up, breathing shallowly. Looking in the mirror, he thought he'd never seen such an unappealing face in his life. It was enough to make him laugh, thinking of Chris recoiling from him in this damaged state.

After getting some food at the saloon -- not much, as it almost hurt to eat -- he went over to Nathan's, but ran into Ezra on the way there.

"You're looking a bit better. The sleep helped, I'm sure," Ezra said kindly, a tone of voice that always surprised Vin a little.

"Considering how I spent half the time out of my head, you'd think I wouldn't need more sleep," Vin replied.

"I'm just glad -- we're all glad you're all right."

"Chris still at Nathan's?"

"Buck and I just left. He was sleeping, but not well, and he's in a great deal of pain." He looked down at his boots, then up at Vin. "Everyone is already speculating about it in their own way. Mrs. Travis tried to ask, in her oblique manner, without really asking. The rest of the boys are wondering. I know. Not our business, but there is much concern for you. I don't want to ask, but... what did she do to you both? How could such a thing happen?"

Vin looked down the street, aware that this would go on for some time, and could even affect their positions here in town. No one would push, no one would ask any more than Ezra had, but these events would sow a seed of doubt. They would have to work to prove themselves again. He thought of Josiah's comment that Chris had been brought here by a greater power, that God or fate or something else had brought him to them to heal, to become a new person. He'd believed that then, but now Vin wasn't so certain. How could Chris come back from this? If he'd learned to live with his sorrows before, what would he do with these fresh ones? Maybe shove Vin further away than ever, or reject Buck and the friendship of the others. He didn't like the possibilities.

Or maybe he'd let them find him again the way he had before. It was something to hope for. "I don't know, Ezra," Vin said quietly. He scratched his chin, the beard growth itching his ravaged face. "But it's over now." He didn't want to say how shaky he felt about moving on and his doubts about Chris, not now. Maybe later if he reckoned Ezra could really understand.

Ezra said, "No gossip will be allowed within my earshot."

Vin smiled at him. "I know." He paused for a moment. "Your Derringer saved our lives." Vin nodded at him and Ezra shook his hand, before walking away.

He should go see Josiah. When they'd first arrived, in the commotion of taking care of Chris, Josiah had tended to Vin's wounds and helped him get cleaned up. Mary Travis had come to help him, because she could do nothing for Chris, really, but her intense concern had left him feeling stifled and shy. Vin had pushed Josiah and her away as quickly as he could, agreeing to sleep, to eat and drink, if they would just leave him alone to lick his own wounds. Of course they wished to know everything, to understand what had brought this to pass, but he could not tell them and they would not ask, at least not anything beyond what Ezra had just asked him. Not now, maybe not ever. Josiah, Vin knew, would understand it all eventually, anyway. That was his trait, to think on things and understand what was in people's souls. It would satisfy him if Josiah explained to the others what had happened.

Up the stairs above the livery, Vin walked into the room and said hello softly to Nathan, who was sleeping in his chair by the window. Nathan woke slowly and looked at Chris, then at Vin. "You want to stay with him?" he asked, yawning.

Vin could smell the ointment-soaked bandages that had been wrapped over Chris's burns, the pungent odor of Nathan's herbs. Chris's ankle was tightly bound and resting on a few feather pillows, his arm bound close to his side. Nathan had cleaned him up, which Vin was grateful for; he knew how much that would matter to Chris.

"I'll stay tonight. I'm all sleeped out now, so you go get yourself a good night's rest." Vin looked at Chris. "Is there anything else he needs I should know about?"

"Nah, I gave him some medicines, and put some salve on his burns."

Vin could tell Nathan was wondering how the burns came to be, but Vin turned his face away, unable to let himself answer, knowing Nathan would not pry.

Nathan looked at Vin's face and handed him some foul-smelling unguent that looked like bear grease that had turned. Nathan motioned at him and said, "For you. You ain't exactly in better shape, yourself."

Vin just nodded in response.

"I'll be back in the morning, then, if you can take that much sittin' up."

"I'm fine now." He didn't want to let Nathan know how bad he still felt, about the fear that had settled like some eely thing, cold and slimy in the pit of his stomach. But Vin could tell Nathan didn't believe him anyway by the look the big man gave him.

After Nathan left, Vin slid the bolt across the door and crawled onto the bed next to Chris, not too close, just enough to feel the lack of heat coming from his body. He pulled the blanket up over Chris's chest and rested his hand on the left hip, the only place on Chris that didn't bear some kind of wound or injury.

After a bit, Chris woke up, and turned to Vin. "Now who's the idiot watching someone sleep?" It had been so many years since he'd wakened to that feeling of sweetness, seeing the face of someone he cared so much for right next to him.

"Just glad to have you to watch."

Chris put his good hand awkwardly on Vin's arm. "Be kind of hard to explain if Nathan comes back."

"I put the bolt on the door. 'sides, he's planning on sleeping all night." Vin raised himself up on his arm and looked down at Chris. The shifting made Chris wince, though, and Vin could feel that same overwhelming grief inside him at what this had come to. "Lemme get off this thing and give you some room." He moved as gently as he could off the bed. Vin pulled up the chair next to the bed.

"Water?" Chris asked, and Vin helped Chris sit up, before giving him a glassful. "Won't even ask you for some whisky, because I know you won't give it to me."

"Not now. Maybe tomorrow. Doc's orders."

"Yeah, yeah. Why is it they have to take the fun out of everything?"

Vin didn't answer, just sat and looked at Chris, glad of seeing his humor back. It was one tiny crumb of something positive in this.

"You're a sight for sore eyes." Chris hated being helpless in this bed, especially because he wanted nothing more than to hold on to Vin for dear life. Even if everything hadn't capsized like this, leaving him floundering in the wake, he'd have felt that way. He knew it with complete certainty. Felt that overwhelming tenderness, that need again after these fearful days. Vin was wearing the faded red shirt Chris liked, dark brown trousers, no jacket or hat, not even his gun. He looked so open and trusting being here like that, Chris thought, though he could not name why.

"Think it's more like I could give someone sore eyes from looking at me. I'm a mess."

"You're wonderful." Chris was so grave about it that he almost made himself laugh. But he was in too much pain to laugh.

They let the silence settle on the room like dust, just watching each other. Chris would sometimes doze and then awaken, always starting when he did, still not certain he was here and safe. Safe because he was with Vin.

Reaching into his pants pocket, Vin pulled out the soft doeskin bag he'd had before and put it next to him. Chris looked inside it, wondering what he could have in there this time, and saw two feathers and a tan-colored powder, probably a ground root, some strong medicine he'd have picked up from the people he'd lived with. "Eagle feathers," Vin said. "To help you heal. More superstition," he added, smiling.

The sorrow and the devotion he felt for Vin at that moment almost choked him. These tenderhearted, spare gestures of his moved Chris so much. He knew he could never live his life again without this friendship.

By and by he felt the strength to talk again, and said quietly to Vin, "I killed her. She was going to kill me, anyway. I think she wanted me to and let her guard down. I shot her in the chest, and watched her watching me. But I didn't care if she shot me first. Because I thought you were dead."

The words Vin had said to him before, about always finding him, hadn't been enough to carry him through it then. But he couldn't tell Vin that.

"It's over now." He knew, though, that it would never really be over for Chris, or even for him when he looked at Chris. Each time Vin would see those scars -- either the physical ones or the ones in his soul -- he'd remember her and everything she'd done to them, to Chris's family. You could heal, but you were never unmarked from such events.

"Even when she was trying to sweet-talk me, or convince me she was loving and good, there was something in her face, something that looked different. I recognized it this time, even though I couldn't before. Something wrong."

"What'd it look like?" Vin gazed down at his hands, then back up at Chris from under his brows.

He thought for a while. "Like death." Chris wondered if you could ever really say you loved death. Maybe you'd embrace it when it found you, maybe you were so weary of life you thought death could be your friend if it took you away, but could you love it? Could you love someone who carried it inside them?

Vin looked out the window, trying to push back the need to apologize to Chris again or ask him for forgiveness. But it overpowered him. "I let you down. I said I'd always be there and I wasn't. Wouldn't blame you if you never wanted a thing to do with me."

When he looked back at Chris, there was nothing on his face to betray his thoughts.

Chris's voice was edgy and quiet. "There is not one thing to forgive you for. I'm the one needs forgiving, for bringing her into your life."

"Well, I ain't gonna sit here and fight about it with you, if that's what you want." He smiled patiently.

"Damn right, you won't." Chris paused, thought for awhile, and said, "We wanted to find each other. That's what counts."

Vin reached out for Chris's hand and Chris took it, sliding his hand up to clasp Vin's forearm. Vin did the same and held tightly to him.

"I can't tell you right now what she did to me and how I felt," Chris said quietly. "But in time I will, you can depend on it. I'm just not able to right now."

In his usual manner, Vin merely nodded his head to say he understood. He sat back in the chair, still clasping Chris's wrist. Maybe Josiah and Ezra had been right, they were two of a kind. In each other they had discovered their other half; known that necessary part of the other's soul and responded. If there were better definitions of love, Vin could not come up with them himself, and this one suited him. If Chris needed to take care of someone, that was all right by Vin. He'd lived inside himself for so long and been contented with that, with his own strength and solitariness, that he hadn't known you could live otherwise until he'd met Chris and the boys. He learned over the past few years that you could let go sometimes and open yourself up, allow someone else to help you carry the weight. Chris needed someone to do those things so he could help them or connect with them, and Vin thought it would be his pleasure to do it.

They sat that way until the soft coppery edges of morning showed outside the window, hands clasped, connected, in the way Vin had hoped to feel his whole life. He was happy to wait here, and to let Chris find him.

**Author's Note:**

> Knowledgeable readers will notice I've moved Serpents up ahead of Obsession for this story. Because, you know, I can, and because I wanted Obsession to be last for the purposes of the tale.


End file.
